I'm Tired Of Talking About Colorism

It is 2025. Why are Black women still having discourse about colorism? What more is there to say? I thought we already knew and accepted that most, if not all, Black males are colorist in one way or another. Why am I still seeing tiktok after tiktok of Black women complaining about the dating preferences of Black male celebrities? Why are Black women still getting upset when a Black male content creator is exposed for being colorist when you should not have been supporting him in the first place? To all my lovely Black women, I mean this from the bottom of my heart. Grow the hell up and move the hell on. Accept that the Black community will never have dark skin Black women’s best interest at heart and divest.

Constantly making self-deprecating tiktoks about your darker skin tone or othering yourself from other groups of women is not a productive way to tackle colorism. If anything, you are reinforcing the belief that dark skin is inherently bad when you boil down every minor inconvenience or bad dating experience that happens to you to your darker skin tone. This way of thinking has got to stop. Dark skin is not a curse nor a disability. There are hundreds of dark skin women who are thriving and living their best lives. I also believe that Black women, of all shades, need to be very mindful about the way we talk about our features on public platforms. You never know who is watching. Many nonBlack women use the insecurities some Black women may have about themselves to raise their self-esteem. Do not give them that power. Never speak ill of your beautiful chocolate skin on social media. 

Another tip is to stop supporting Black male artists in any capacity, yes, that includes the ones who “are not colorist”. The Black male celebrities who claim to not be colorist still do not promote dark skin beauty, so why should they receive any of Black women’s hard earned money? Like Kendall St. Charles said, “STOP IT”. Withdraw support from anything that heavily benefits the Black man or his image. Furthermore, stop manstroking dark skin Black men online. Stop talking about how much you want a chocolate man or chocolate babies. It is embarrassing. This obsession some dark skin women seem to have with dark skin men is not reciprocated. In almost every single relationship photo I see online involving a dark skin man, he is with a light skin or nonBlack woman. This one-sided loyalty must come to an end. There is not a single group of males that Black women should be uplifting. Not white men. Not Asian men. Not Latino men. Not Black men. If you want to compliment your boyfriend, that is fine, but bringing up his race or skin tone is not needed.

Lastly, Black men have made it very clear that they will never behave like a productive group of males should. While other races of women can rely on their male counterparts to promote their beauty, unfortunately, the onus to promote dark skin beauty falls onto Black women. It should not be this way, but the Black community is dedicated to worshipping and protecting Black males only. So, instead of posting another useless woe-is-me story about being dark skin online, create a collage of beautiful darkskin Black women from various ethnicities, caption the video with the title “Women and their beauty”, and then post it on Twitter or TikTok for the entire world to see. Just remember to not bring up the skin tone of these women as doing so is actually very othering and counterproductive to the goal we are trying to achieve which is highlighting the beauty of dark skin women. We do not want to accidentally contribute to the othering of darker skinned women from their own womanhood. 

Personally, I feel as though once you divest from the Black community, colorism becomes an irrelevant topic to discuss so frequently. I do not desire the life Black men give to their preferences. Becoming a single mother to a demographic full of anti-social narcissists will never be a goal of mine. The fact that we all can see the videos of Black men’s white or light skin baby mamas screaming like animals all over social media is why I find Black women trying to call out Black men’s colorist dating habits really irritating. Do you want to trade places with Cardi B., Iggy Azalea, Chrisean, Kim Kardashian, or Halle Bailey? I sure as hell do not. If you truly want to battle colorism, stop talking about your beautiful dark skin as though it is a rare form of aggressive cancer. Learn to promote dark skin women’s beauty in a way that debunks or defies any negative stereotypes associated with dark skin. Only then can dark skin women truly thrive.