The Great Divide

By:Denise Whitmore

What is the point of being divided as a race when so much is going on to break our race? The great divide being referred to is this turmoil surrounding being “light-skinned “or “dark-skinned”. Colorism started way before the troubles of modern society started to boil. Colorism can easily be traced back to slavery with darker Africans being put to work outside with cruel manual labor, while the light Africans worked inside in better conditions.

This separation lead to the instilled value of the lighter African being worth more or valued more. As generations went on this same value stayed with not only blacks but whites, the treatment of lighter African-Americans is easily found in media and society.

The new generation has taken the battle of melanin and made it broad and open on social media which is calling more attention to the situation. Many rappers and song writers have often degraded dark women by finding their lighter sisters a better model or more superior.

One of the most known lyrics to have done this is in Lil Wayne’s song “Right Above It”. The popular artist said “Beautiful black woman, I bet that b**** look better red”. Although it was the simple rhyming of words he showed the favoring of a light woman over dark. May lighter model have been chosen over darker models and are more accepted in society’s view of beauty.

Although others don’t find our race beautiful we should. As black women we should be uplifting each other not tearing each other down .In newly streaming hashtag on twitter #UnconventionalBlackBeauty, many black girls and women used this hashtag to let go of their biggest insecurities and flaunt tot the world what wouldn’t be beautiful.

A downside to this hash tag was that when asked what conventional beauty was many users pulled up pictures of light women and used pictures of dark skin women to be unconventional. Gratefully, the creator of tag cleared up the misconception and set it all straight but this shed light on how black women have still divided themselves in the eyes of beauty.

As a race we need to pull together and especially as a sisterhood. How dark you are should not determine how black you are. Why fight internally when there is an external fight going on? Black women and black men don’t be distracted or be misled on colorism it is real and it needs to change, we are one. We should be united as a people not divided. We should be united as sisters, not divided.