The social battle between “light skin” and “dark skin” people of color has been going on for centuries, but when I was in high school and social media became all the rage, it got out of control. The posts and hash tags like #teamlightskin and #teamdarkskin became popular and with all of this came the stereotypes about what was perceived as a light skin attribute versus a dark skin attribute. I thought this had died out after high school, but apparently not. There is now a meme going around on Twitter with a picture of an animated woman who goes from light-skinned all the way to dark-skinned, and the meme states “Ladies lined up in order from chill to petty.” Of course “chill” is the lightest woman and “petty” is the darkest woman. All the tweets after that are demeaning to dark-skinned woman and they are all by Black men of color. It goes to show what little respect darker skinned women receive to this day. I know we as Black people have been trained that light skin is better because of the connotations that went with darker skin during slavery but it’s 2016. Light skin, brown skin, dark skin; we are all winning and honestly the color of your skin does not determine what kind of person you’re going to be. So can’t we all just get along and leave the hate elsewhere. We all just need to love one another.
