the brownskin vs darkskin debate on tiktok

hey guys it's amanda i feel like i haven't filmed a video in a minute so i am adjusting i've been spending the last few weeks um really producing and rewriting and directing this short film that i've been working on for a while and now that the kind of hard part actually filming it is over i have some more time to work on youtube videos so i'm really excited and i'm gonna try to like get a more consistent posting schedule i'm gonna try to post fridays at 12 p.m anyway today i'm going to be talking about colorism more specifically the labels dark skin and brown skin honestly i feel like i never really heard the term brown skin until very recently i knew there was the beyonce song brown skin girl but recently on my tic toc feed i've been seeing a lot of debate over who is brown skin and who is dark skin and what these labels encompass so today i'm just going to kind of examine this whole debate because i find it incredibly interesting i'm going to start by talking about my personal experience with these labels and then get into what i've noticed about the internet discourse on this so growing up i knew there were endless shades of black because my mom really made it a point to buy us picture books that emphasized that such as the color of us and shades of black you know all those classic growing up black picture books also my dad and my sister and my grandma and a few of my other family members have more of a peach skin tone and would probably be considered light skin so i understood that you could be racially classified as black even if the color of your skin didn't match that description i basically always use the apricot or pink crayon to draw my dad and sister because they didn't have the same brown skin as me and my other siblings and my mom but honestly in our household their skin tone didn't really have any other implications beyond that it literally was a skin deep thing which i feel really lucky for because experiencing colorism from your own family definitely isn't unheard of there weren't any colorist tendencies in our household but me and my siblings did try to trick my sister by telling her that she was adopted sometimes i think as i got older my self-esteem was mostly impacted by the external mythical eurocentric beauty standard that i saw perpetuated in media and in my peers in a predominantly white school system even though i definitely experienced microaggressions here and there i wouldn't say i experienced colorism simply because most of the people i was surrounded by were white and colorism is usually more explicitly verbalized by those who are the same race as you i think the main reason why i ever wanted lighter skin isn't necessarily because of super formative interpersonal experiences but because of the larger looming beauty standard which basically said the closer to white you are the prettier and more desirable you are so i definitely know in the dark days of my life when i use snapchat i choose filters that would slightly lighten my skin and make me look more like eurocentric and that really you know just messes up what you think about yourself when you take that off it's just like oh that's what i really look like and it's a whole thing but i also remember using like editing apps like after light to turn up the exposure on pictures to make my skin as light as possible without making it seem unnatural even though i never had anyone tell me to my face oh lighter skin is better i think that the media i consumed and seeing how my white peers were treated in comparison to me sent that message in a way that was just as explicit i was definitely aware that there were people who had a darker skin than me and i never was one to like explicitly label myself as dark skin or light skin but i knew that i didn't have light skin because i was darker than my sister and my dad and i knew you know that's what light skin looks like so i think i always just kind of internally identified myself as dark skin and i say internally because i never really found it necessary to explicitly state that i also feel like those identifiers are labels that people more so use within the black community and as i said before i didn't really have much of a black community in my daily life it was basically like i'm usually the only black person in my class or my activity or whatever and white people see me as black so there's not really a point in trying to amend that in any way by calling myself dark skin or light skin or whatever i'm sure there were points in my childhood when i told my mom oh i'm not black i'm brown which you know is objectively true because practically speaking of course my skin is brown and all black people's skin is brown but i understood very quickly that racially i was black so honestly until very recently when i started hearing this term brown skin i self identified as dark skin and i thought other people saw me that way too okay so this brings me to brown skin what does it mean where did it come from and why are people at least people on my for you page starting to use the term more frequently so like anyone looking for information in the 21st century i consulted google it's not a peer-reviewed academic journal but i found a comprehensive answer in this quora post from georgia hayward it reads brown skins fall in between dark skins and light skins light skins are usually half white or have light-skinned parents some examples ars and daia georgia smith and amandla senberg brown skins aren't quite as light as light skins but they're still light examples beyonce nicki minaj and meghan the stallion dark skins have pigmented round skin it's usually at your own discretion when it comes to determining who's dark skin and who's brown skin because many dark-skinned girls call themselves brown skin despite being dark skin examples normani whitney houston ari lenox of course this isn't rule or law it's just a post on the internet that i'm sure people disagree with but it's a starting point nonetheless so where did the term brown skin specifically in the context of black people come from before i even get into this i feel like it's always so important to add that race is a social construct meaning that it's a human invented classification system it was invented as a way to define physical differences between people but has more often been used as a tool for oppression and violence so now that that's out of the way it's important to note that in america the defining feature of whiteness is exclusivity to keep as many people from being classified as white as possible and that's why the one drop rule was invented if you had any sort of blackness in you no matter how small the percentage you were black not white so this is why black people come in all shades blackness was constructed to be inclusive so there could be more people to oppress and exploit and this is where colorism comes in because black people have such a wide variety of skin tones that are measured relative to whiteness naturally well not naturally because race isn't biologically real rather consequently the closer you are to white the more privileges you're afforded both by institutions like the school or the legal systems but even on more interpersonal levels when it comes to desirability romance and even job prospects it's also important to note that colorism plays out differently in different communities and contexts there is colorism performed by white power structures like courts schools and businesses and colorism as practiced within the black community evidenced when we talk about marriage statistics and measurements of color amongst black communities there has been one prominent distinction between the different shades of black and it's whether you're light skinned or not and this even manifested into the brown paper bag test which was used to determine what privileges an individual could have only those with skin color that matched or was lighter than a brown paper bag were allowed admission or membership privileges in certain spaces the test was believed by many to be used in the 20th century by many african-american institutions such as sororities fraternities and churches i'll be like am i dark skinned am i light skinned i can't tell i'm frown skinned and brushed again for centuries the spectrum of blackness has been split down the middle and labeled as binary even recently as 2016 hashtags like teen light skin and hashtag team dark skin divided black twitter feeds but in 2019 there was a shift and her name was beyonce brown skin girl was released in 2019 and with this came a wave of black girl magic specifically dark skinned black girl magic of course the song is incredibly inclusive but there was a conscious choice to highlight dark-skinned black women i just don't think dark skinned girl has the same ring as brown skin girl of course beyonce didn't invent the term brown skin i'm sure plenty of people have referred to themselves in that way before because all shades of black skin tones are really some variation of brown but i do think her song made the term a bit more mainstream socially acceptable and alleviated the previously stark and restricted labels of light skin or dark skin because like in life in skin tone there are gray rather brown areas i think a lot of people felt seen and empowered by brown skin girl for two reasons one i think dark-skinned girls and women were happy to be so explicitly celebrated in popular media for once and two i think there were people who probably didn't feel comfortable labeling themselves as either dark skinned or light skinned and brown skin is a very happy medium that is pragmatic and has more of a positive connotation than dark skin which has historically been demeaned and marginalized within black communities and other communities of color though beyonce's use of brown skin was meant to be inclusive and celebratory of dark-skinned black women the term brown skin has found its way out of the context of this catchy song and into being used as another categorization for a particular range of shades on the spectrum of blackness the shades that aren't particularly light skinned but aren't dark skinned either and i personally only started noticing this because of tick tocks that were showing up on my purview page so like i mentioned earlier i kind of always internally identified myself as dark skin because i very clearly knew i wasn't light skinned and those kind of seem to be the two most prominent labels so honestly when i saw brown skin popping up as this new sort of classification i was confused i saw the term kind of being used and perceived in two different ways one was to earnestly make more space in the binary for people who truly felt like they didn't fit under the labels of dark skin or light skin which is valid and understandable there were some people out there that felt that labeling themselves as dark skin even if they didn't have the darkest skin ever might detract from the experiences and hardships that people with skin tone stroker than them experienced but the second more prominent way i saw brown skin being both used and perceived was as a way of distinguishing and distancing oneself from the label of dark skin most tick tocks i saw were of people who were frustrated with the term because it felt like people were trying to distance themselves from being labeled dark skinned so they would call themselves brown skin in this weird racial caste system we live in as long as you perceive yourself to be in a higher social tier than someone else you're good you're not the lowest on the totem pole i think some people specifically people who already identified as having dark skin perceive the term brown skin to be an unnecessary term that places people who identify as dark skinned on an even lower tier in this racial caste system because i don't want to be black i want to be white this marks the beginning of my anti-brown skin campaign if you have been personally victimized or just annoyed by the brown skins you have seen on this app in your area feel free to join me um cause y'all don't you're not getting bullied enough we've been we've been letting y'all slide and um i don't like that you know you're no longer sliding so what does this even mean the top comment on this video reads brown skins should just be considered dark skins too they're really holding on to the fact that they're almost light skinned and another one reads brown skins are just dark skins that don't want to admit it to themselves while i think these points may be true about some people it's also important to note that different people who identify as brown skin genuinely have different intentions some more pure than others i truly don't think everyone who identifies as brown skin is self-hating or trying to distance themselves from being dark skinned when i openly identify as dark skinned i found that people are confused or upset because it seems like i'm trying to claim an experience that they don't think i've truly realized because relative to all the shades of black i don't have the darkest skin ever so the label of me as brown skin and of course it's important to note that dark and light are relative depending on where you are in a lot of spaces i was in growing up i was the darkest person in the room because i was the only black person there so that has influenced my perception of myself but in the context of putting myself out on the internet where i can be compared to an endless number of different shades then i'm usually not perceived as dark skin my main hesitation with claiming brown skin is that i don't want it to come off as if i'm trying to distance myself from being dark-skinned because honestly i'm not and if someone perceives me to be dark-skinned it's not something to be ashamed of or offended by okay so now i want to talk about brown skin privilege and if it even exists do i believe that brown skin privilege exists yes to an extent i've kind of come to the conclusion that in order to benefit from brown skin privilege in a meaningful way you need to have the right features to go along with it and of course these right features are relative to the socially constructed eurocentric beauty standard that doesn't have a basis in real science but has persisted long enough to be deemed the standard and in this society the closer you are to that standard the more privileges and benefits you reap because of it with that being said i think brown-skinned people can experience privilege to varying degrees depending on the following factors one of the factors is if you have the ideal body type of the time which right now is basically having an hourglass shape another part of body shape is build if you're more muscular and tall this detracts from the dainty frail form of femininity which the eurocentric beauty standard idealizes and even if you have curves the beauty standard demands that the rest of your body is gaunt and devoid of as much bulky muscle and fat as possible so as to take up less space another feature is having a slim narrow upturned nose because that is commonly associated with being eurocentric as well and of course having looser longer hair basically hair that isn't short or foresy because again it's more eurocentric and even having the right size lips like full lips because they're trendy right now and even still you need to have like the right shape and the right size of fullness that like the kardashians or whatever have so do i think you can experience brown skin privilege if you have all of these features 100 and do i think you can experience brown skin privilege with even some of these features yes but i think if you're not close to the beauty standard as possible round skin privilege is negligible and i even think that in some cases you wouldn't be afforded the label of brown skin itself if you don't have several of these features i've seen people use the line between dark skin and brown skin as a way to determine pretty versus not people will say oh you're not dark skinned you're pretty you're brown skin and i think people forget that brown skin and privileges that come with it are more nuanced than the distinction between light skin and dark skin and the benefits one reaps from being brown skin can heavily depend on other physical characteristics and even economic class we've seen that light-skinned people were afforded class privileges that dark-skinned people were not and i would think the same could follow for having brown skin versus dark skin even if those privileges are comparatively negligible i think that brown skin privilege can help you but it won't save you or elevate you in life the way that light skin privilege does and if you don't have the other features that align with the beauty standard working in your favor having brown skin isn't going to afford you discernible privileges especially if you're already the only black person in a space and now to conclude this video is the categorization slash the colorization of brown skin as a sub affinity group of black people necessary and or productive racial labels were created with the intention to divide and oppress people though they are scientifically baseless the social implications of them are all too real and i think that's an important thing to note when talking about groups and labels within a race as well so is it productive and effective to say that because this isn't biologically real we shouldn't use labels like dark skin light skin or brown skin anymore we shouldn't acknowledge the privileges that come with these different skin tones no i think what matters more is the connotation behind them and getting to a point first and foremost within ourselves and then within our communities and then within the larger world that these labels don't have to be divisive or relative to one another on a hierarchy rather they can equally coexist on a horizontal plane and be celebrated and honestly i think beyonce's brown skin girl was a really good first step at attempting to equalize skin tones on a larger scale i do think it's important if you identify as brown skin to question your intentions and ask yourself if it's coming from a place of wanting to distinguish yourself from being dark skinned or if it's just a label that you genuinely feel like fits you of course it's important to remember that shades of black are on a spectrum and so is privilege and it's important to recognize and acknowledge your own privilege within this white supremacist system but outside of this man-made rule there is nothing wrong with having dark skin and it should be embraced with open arms at the end of the day individual labels will never capture the full nuance of things that exist on a spectrum so i don't think it's productive to fight in comments with strangers on the internet about skin color or anything really but i think it's important to have discussions in your social circles and communities about colorism because honestly you can't solve a problem if you can't even talk about it anyway i hope that you guys enjoyed this video i find this discourse to be really fascinating and interesting and would love to hear your thoughts below um i will see you in my next video and have a great day bye

Channel: amandamaryanna

Views: 40,982

Rating: 4.9741006 out of 5

Keywords: the brownskin vs darkskin debate on tiktok, brown skin girl, colorism, colorist tiktok, It's Not a Coincidence. It's Colorism., What is colorism, Is light skin privilege real, Are dark skin women just bitter, darkskin vs brownskin, darkskin vs lightskin, brown skin vs dark skin, let's talk about colorism, why can't black women be the love interest?, the quirky/awkward black girl, colorism in hollywood, colorism in the industry, pretty privilege, the black girl fetish

Id: N2dHw6Itzqs

Length: 20min 52sec (1252 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021