Pretty. Period.

to our core understanding of colorism. Now let me provide you with the Oxford Dictionary definition of colorism prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among

people of the same ethnic or racial group. This is according to Wikipedia, discrimination based on skin color, also known as colorism or shadism, is a form of prejudice and or discrimination in which people who share similar ethnicity, traits, or perceived race are treated differently based on the social implications that come with the cultural meanings that are attached to skin color. Colorism is a serious issue. It's one that I have seen play out in this country in

other countries. In my family's home country of Jamaica, I thought it was really interesting recently when I was kind of going through photos of past prime ministers in Jamaica in particular, and realizing that they all had a similar look to them. Super fair skin, right, very very fair skin, their hair texture would be very similar to those of white people. And they've always been in charge of an island that is largely filled with people whose skin tone

look like mine. And what does that say, right, how do we absorb that? And what it is said is that white supremacy is a hell of a fucking drug. That regardless of if you grew up right in a country, in a place that there was an overwhelming presence of darker skinned people, that sadly, you could not say that

you were unaffected by white supremacy. My sisters, she was traveling around Asia, would tell me that she would never pick up skincare products, whether it be something as simple as a lotion or a body wash, and bring it home that everything that she would use right when she was living abroad would be from the United States. I'd say, why because of the bleaching elements you see in many countries,

including many on the continent of Africa. Bleaching is a common practice where you either use different skincare products or actually just dip yourself in pure fucking bleach so that you can get lighter. Because the crime of white supremacy has meant that the closer you are to whiteness, the better you are. It doesn't matter if you are dipping yourself in a toxin that could destroy your skin, cause cancer, blindness,

severe rashes, bleeding. That the desire to be fairer skin outweighs the pain, the pain of what it would mean to exist in a darker skinned body. Think about that. My sister would tell me that, particularly in Asia in the hotter temperature months, that you would see people completely covered, wearing gloves, carrying parasols because the idea of your skin not resembling that of porcelain was problematic. Why because of

the toxicity of white supremacy. Because of the export that has been done from European nations and America that sends images and videos of the blue, wide, blonde hair, fair skin, people who live these wonderful lives and are wealthy, and are adored and are considered attractive, whose characteristics, whose physical characteristics are used as yardsticks for the rest of the world, which is majority people of color, to measure themselves against.

It's why during the Jim Crow error and time, we had something in the United States called the brown paperbag test, which is that if your skin was lighter than a brown paper bag, then you were accepted, you were welcomed in to certain places. If it was not, you might as well be trash on a curb. It's why doctor Yaba Blay had started a social media campaign that spawned

into so much more called Pretty Period. And she asked me many years ago if I would participate as a darker skinned woman that we had always been told, and it had been perceived to be a compliment that you are pretty for a dark skinned girl, and her concept of you are pretty period full stop was to be a campaign that would empower darker skinned women and girls

throughout the diaspora. You know, it pains me sometimes when I recognize just how pervasive white supremacy is, just how you know, you want to talk about a pandemic of COVID nineteen and yet we don't talk about the pandemic of white supremacy and how it has spread around the world as a virus has infected every industry, every space, every piece of policy and legislation that we have in this country has been dictated by whether or not we should give a damn, whether we should extend empathy is

based on people's skin. There is a meme that has gone around for so long with the family guy and you hold up the piece of paper that shows the gradiations of whiteness, and then it moves into olive and then finally darker skin tones, and it dictates to you, based on the gradiation, whether or not you should be considered a terrorist, store alone wolf, for somebody with mental illness. You see, those memes exist because it's reality. It's reality when you walk down the street, when you go and

try and you know, go into a store. How you are looked at, how you are perceived, doesn't matter how clean you are or how pressed your clothes are. It isn't the content of your character. It isn't the amount of degrees. It's about the depths of your melanine. And what's sad is that in every country that you go into, you understand their relationship to colorism based on who's in charge,

who gets to pull the lovers of power. I remember being in India, traveling in India so many years ago and part of my family immigrated from Calcutta, India to Jamaica, so I have lineage that is Indian and I had never felt so different, so othered, and imagine this, I'm from fucking America than when I was in India. It was wild to me. People were staring and pointing, right because I was so dark. But what was wild is that there were people who were doing that that were

darker than me. Right. You see what we get exported from India in Bollywood with regard to what it looks like to be Indian is the you know, the Primillagia Pauls right, the Prianka Chopras right, the fairer skinned, long hair people, when in fact they have every color, every depth of melanin that you can imagine. But based on their cast system and based on their worthiness that if you are a darker skinned person, you are just less desirable. And why is that? Oh? Well, because the British ruled

them for so goddamn long. You know, I often wonder and if I was like a you know, like a director or a screenwriter, I still want to see a genre of sci fi that would tackle what the world would look like if white supremacy hadn't grabbed it and strangled it and had hold over the globe for so many years, thousands of years, Right, I wonder what we would look like, how we would be, how we would tolerate, accept love people, or if we would then, because of

human nature, just look for another way to other people to isolate them. But this conversation that I have with doctor Yaba Blay about colorism really delves into the depths of what still needs to be unpacked about white supremacy and about racism and how it is internalized. Right, you know, you have people these quote unquote black Republicans are Latin extra Republicans that believe that their proximity to whiteness, even if they actually look like me, their proximity to whiteness

will somehow save them. And the reality is is that in a crowd, in a mob, they gonna look the same as me. So it's wild to believe that either the physical shifting of your skin or your ideology will allow you to access something that the white world has never wanted you to access, which is true liberty and freedom, which is to break outside of our global cast system

that is designed by the depth of your melanin. What would it mean to live outside of that box, to live outside of that distortion, to have not contracted the virus of white supremacy and internalized colorism. The conversation coming up next with doctor Yaba Blay will help to provide some perspective and insight into how we deal with, how

we talk about, and how we deconstruct colorism. Folks, I'm always so excited and honored when I get to bring some folks that I follow, friends, colleagues back to woke f And if you've been following me for a long time, you've heard me have the pleasure of speaking with doctor

Yaba Blay. You know her as an academic, the founder of Professional Black Girl on Instagram, the author of the award winning book One Drop of Putting a Lens on Race, A doctor that covers colorism, white supremacy, anti blackness, and basically everything that upsets our souls as black people. Doctor Yaba Blay, Welcome back to woke f Daily. Thank you

doing good to be here this month. The world seems shocked once again with the understanding that white supremacy exists and as a thing, and it doesn't matter if you are a princess. If you are the greatest athlete of all time, I'm talking about Serena Williams. It doesn't matter if you're a Beyonce, it doesn't matter what heights you have achieved. White supremacy will find its way to try

and pull you down. I wanted to get your initial reaction to the media's response to the Meghan Markle and Oprah Winfrey and Harry interview and the understanding that someone right in the royal family was commenting on her unborn child Archie at the time, wondering how dark he was going to be, and all of the things that happened following that, the loss of security, literal protection for her, for her child, for herself, and essentially being thrown to

the wolves in the UK. What were your reactions to that story. I had quite a few reactions. I'm constantly trying to reground myself and with whole judgment and annoyance with the rest of the world, because I continually remind myself that these aren't average conversations that everybody has all the time, and so I'm privileged in that surrounded by some very dope and brilliant folks. You know, we have

challenging conversations regularly, but the average person does not. I watched that interview with my seventy eight year old gunny and mother, who has long been fascinated by the magical world of the royals. So Princess Diana was her girl, you know, and I know she was front and center watching Harry and Megan's wedding, as was much of the world, and so we watched the interview together. Of course, she

wasn't gonna miss that. And so there's that moment when Megan reveals that there were questions about Archie's complexion, and you know what's now been meaned over and over again. Oprah's response that right. My mom had a very similar reaction, and I just looked at her and I'm like, Mom, like who colonised Ghanna? Right? And like you are you right? You're right, same people and they don't have to change. And so for me, the kind of frustration, I almost

feel like, are we gaslighting ourselves? You know? And so there are a couple things perhaps that are happening. I think from an American perspective, right, the idea that we are surprised may be connected to our limited vantage vantage point on what the UK is or who the UK is for folks who haven't had the opportunity to travel, or don't know folks who live there or whatever. Right, whatever we know about the UK is what the media

has given us. And I think for many Americans, we have, like my mother been, you know, swept off of our feet by the whole idea of a royal family and a crown and all of those kinds of like magical images that we get, and not as much familiarity with what it means to be black in that space, right, experience of blackness in that space. Um, And so the surprise, I don't know, in general, I wonder why we're surprised,

Like are we gaslighting ourselves? Right? Why would we? I'm I was surprised a that Harry was allowed to marry her in the first place. That was that was that was my initial shock. So maybe that's that's why folks are surprised. Maybe they assumed that if he was allowed and I'm using that language very deliberately, if he was allowed to marry Meg and Marco, that perhaps, um, the royal family or the UK was more liberal than they

actually are. Maybe that's where the surprise comes. From But I tried to stay offline a little bit the next day because I already knew it was gonna be, you know, a ship show in terms of all of the conversations around it. But I think it's that surprised the shock um that was most annoying to me, because again, in the same way that I asked my mom, it's like,

what is it that we know about the UK? Like, I'm not a historian, but I'm so very very aware of how important history is to my work, to providing contexts to the work that I do and the work that so many people do and want to do around anti racism. If you attempt to have a conversation about anti racism that starts with George Floyd's murder, that starts in twenty twenty, problem, right, Yeah, that history to ground you right to have an understanding of how we got

here in the first place. So what is it that you need to know about global history to understand what that crown represents? Right? Where does the jewels and the crown come from? M to see what I'm saying, Like, if you're clear about that history, you should absolutely not be surprised that there are conversations about this child's complexion, because as far as their concerned, Megan Markle and I

are the same complexion, you know. It was one of the one tweet that I saw that said and it was a it was a it was a black woman who who tweeted it, and I would say that she's in the realm of you know, of darker chocolate, right, and she was like, if Megan looked like me, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. So when you talk about the allowed, right, the you know, being allowed, it was it was somebody who wrote and I'm so upset

that I can't remember. They're like, colorism is what allowed Megan Markle to marry into that family, and colorism is what had her flee the country. And so I want you for for for for the audience to unpack that sentiment of what that means, because it hit me and I was just like, you're absolutely goddamn right. I think that was something to the except that, yes, colorism is what allowed her to marry in white supremacy as well

kicked out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in speaking of colorism, right, we were talking about the hierarchical perceptions of and the value associated with skin color and what's important to me. Oftentimes when people talk about colorism, we talk about it like it is an what am I trying to say? An internal issue, like this is what we black people and so called people of color due to ourselves. I don't ever want to just connect colorism from white supremacy.

Colorism is symptom of white supremacy. Right. Colorism is how we internalize white supremacy. If white supremacy is an ideology, is an institution, is a way of of you know, a lens on the world, if you will, that situates whiteness as I mean, the language says supremacy. Again, when I say white premacy, people get uncomfortable because they are conflating white supremacy with white supremacists, meaning you're only thinking of a clan, your only thing, right, frederate flags Right.

I'm talking about white supremacy as a historical ideology and institution that gives us valuations of human value, and those valuations are based on a hierarchy that puts supreme value, ultimate value, highest value in white bodies, in white histories, in white experience, in whiteness. Right. Much of the history of the world operated from this space. Why is it then that it was European countries that colonized African countries and the rest of the world. Why is it now

that Europe still has colonies? Language is important? Why should Europe be in power? Why should Africa be controlled by external sources? External nations? Right? This ideology again that puts highest value a whiteness, colorism because I am a visual person. So imagine a hierarchy with whiteness at the top, blackness at the bottom, various we got, we got a spectrum in between. Colorism essentially says that, Okay, if we're dealing with people of color, those who are closest to whiteness

have more value. Ye, Right, So colorism. To say that colorism is what got her into the palace is to say that her complexion her physical appearance. Right, the average non discerning person, had we not seen her mother, had we not known her background, she could quote unquote pass as meaning very easily. Could she have been mistaken for white? Think about when you think about whiteness as an identity. Those gates have opened differently over time, meaning that Jews,

for example, weren't always considered white. Italians weren't always considered white. Irish weren't always considered white. In the work that I do on hair politics, I know that it wasn't a black woman who invented the straightening comb. It was a Jewish man. Why because that investment in a particular embodiment of whiteness that says blond hair, blue eyes, dare we say, or at the very least right, white skin and straight hair.

People use pejorative language like jew fro right folks from certain regions in the world having a different texture hair that doesn't look like your average you know, quote unquote normal white straight hair. There's an investment similarly to performing whiteness. I need you to receive me and see me and bestow upon me the value that you do to whiteness. So yes, I might have white skin, but my hair is a different texture. So I too, am invested in

straightening that hair so that I can be received similarly. Right, everyone on that spectrum is attempting to climb the ladder if you were wow ye, to get access to the privileges that come in white bodies. So colorism got her in, meaning she was light enough. Right, we've never seen her natural early kinky by racial hair. If that's such a thing. Right. We've seen pictures of what her hair looked like when she was a child. We've never seen that little coil since.

So the investment in keeping that hair straight is also poor part and parcel of how she's going to be received. So, okay, Harry, you want to marry, you know, someone of color, You've fallen in love with someone of color. She just enough. We can stomach this because her physicality is not a constant reminder to us that she is not white in the ways that mine would be. Can't run away from mine hers. You can make a choice about whether or

not you see it or not. Possibly, but for some white people it's still as glaring, right, It's still as glaring in their face as if she were my complexion. So colorism got her aunt meaning she was light enough, right, she was white embodied enough. You know, people call her white passing. I would say white presenting only works if nobody knows, right, some of us can still see it, right, So white presenting, white supremacy, however, says that we don't

care how light you are. We saw your mama, right, I mean the UK headlined straight out of Compton, All of these passive, aggressive little jabs, calling her exotic and all of these things. Her blackness is glaring to them if the comput is a European whiteness. So when it came down to when it came down to it, oh no, we know that you're black, so you're not gonna get the same treatment, the same privileges, the same protection that you would have had you been quote unquote purely right.

It's so, what is so, I guess disturbing but not doesn't catch me off guard. But it's disturbing is how normalized we've allowed this to be right, It is not a shock of what the UK would write and their

tabloids do. They have been doing this for decades. I spoke with an author from the UK, Georgina Lawson, who wrote the book Raceless, about her own experience um coming into coming into her blackness after her family fairly much gaslighted her into believing that it was an accident, that she was like she was some genetic phenom uh in some way, that she that she looked different from everybody else in the family. And she said that her experience

is that in the UK they ignore race. There's no conversation, there's no she's like there's no readily um forced conversation around anti blackness, around white supremacy, around these terms that people are still learning and wrapping their their minds around. But here in the United States it's something that is

more in your face. I want to know your experience as you know, as a as a as an academic and a professor that travels that studies this, how anti blackness or the silence around it differs between what we experience in the United States and what we are what we are seeing or learning show up in the UK as somebody from the outside looking in, Well, I haven't spent a lot of time in the UK. I haven't spent a lot of time in Europe in general, so I can really only speak from what I see projected,

you know, European experiences. And again, in the same way that history is political, the media is political. And for those folks, you know, Americans, as as resourced as we are, as privileged as we are, I would argue that the average American does not leave this country, and if they do, they're going to you know, the Caribbean or Mexico or some vacation a spot. But like in terms of going

to see how the rest of the world lives. I think we rely heavily on the media to show us the world, right, it's part of the access that we have through the media. And so think about it. How much black lived experiences have you seen from Europe. This is why people were completely fascinated by Michael la Cole. That's why we're fascinated when we hear Idris speak naturally because he spent so much time performing a black American accent. Right, Yes,

he too has an accent. I went to Spain a couple of summers ago, and I was absolutely clear that I was black. People were staring at you, and it could have absolutely been where I traveled to. But you're very aware that you're not white in that space. Now, whether or not the conversations are happening in those spaces likely has to do with maybe the history of resistance

in those spaces. Like we can't take for granted what the Civil rights did for our voice, the civil rights movement in America, right, the United Stay did for our voice and our ability to be speaking publicly and freely and calling racism out like that's not quote unquote normal in other spaces necessarily, But I also don't want to because it's not my experience. I also don't want to disrespect the folks who live in those spaces and are likely doing the work right right, right, I don't want

to speak as if they're not doing anything. What I want to recognize is that what they are doing very strategically, we are not going to be made aware of, right, right, There's a swell and a reason right for us to know about it. But like, thinking of my experience in Spain, I always joke with my friends who who are from New York because they tend to call folks who are Latin Spanish, right, And I'm like, y'all, Spain is in Europe. The Spaniards were colonists. They are white, and they see

them and they see themselves as such. They are white. Spanish is a language, right, The reason why folks speak Spanish because they were colonized by the Spaniards. But Spanish is not quote unquote of color. I was very clear that I was in Europe when I was in Spain. Right. But again, I think in terms of this, this moment of of of shock and curiosity and surprise has a lot to do with what we are not exposed to.

It's it's what we're not giving access to in terms of like the lived experiences of black folks in Europe. Of course there's racism there. Of course there is. Of course, again, if we're talking about who are we putting the mic up to? Who are you asking? So like all the whole week all hasn't been a week to week, It's been two weeks now, what is time? Yeah, but it's time. All of the conversations in all of this so called surprise that we have is like it's because we don't

know anything. And the thing that's most annoying to me is that white British folks have the audacity to be somehow offended, right, that somehow they're being mischaracterized, that somehow the UK is not a racist place. We're not asking you, of course, can we talk to some black folks please? Can we talk to some black folks in UK? Let's ask them if you don't get to tell us whether you live as racist. Imagine if we asked the average American if the US was racist, Yeah, they would say no,

they would they would. I mean, we just we just asked a white suprimise that went in and murdered eight people, six Asian people, whether or not he did it as an act of racism, and then we're gonna take his word for it and run with that narrative. He had a bad day. He had a bad day. I have a lot of bad days. I don't kill anybody he was taking without incident. Imagine if black folks had enough black days, enough bad days. Excuse me, a bad day,

a bad day. Yeah, nobody's asking for your perspective because you're not in a position to tell us whether or not the space that we live in is racist. You're invested in it, you're sitting in it. How can you see it? Why is it up for discussion? Yeah? But how do you feel? How do you write in the

work that you do? How do you stave off or maybe you don't the utter and complete exhaustion of working to educate, uplift, expand the perception of blackness and how people show up in their anti blackness, in their racism or don't like how Because I tell you that what I have learned over the past year, and I say this all the time on my show, that people need to take breaks otherwise they're going to have a breakdown. That like, if you don't take a pause. The weight

of all of this can really suffocate you. You how do you work and and navigate through and continue to show up with such a force and a fire. I mean, sometimes you have to get knocked all the way down to be able to see the need for it. Right. So I've I mean, I've been doing this work for most of my career, most of my adult life. So I've had lots of experiences, you know, some awful ones at that, some that have felt like they have absolutely

broken me. But when I just accepted that white supremacy is not going anywhere, not in my lifetime, then I can pace myself. Then I recognize that. Does that mean I give up? No, It means that I recognize that I'm chipping away at it. Do I have the expectation for it to go away? Of course, not how long it's been here. It's gonna be something that my great grandchildren and future generations have to address as well. I'm realistic in that way, So in so doing, I can

pace myself right. But also in the last few years, I've also become very deliberate about accessing joy. I mean, people use the language of balance. I don't know if it's balanced, I just need something else, right. This cannot everyday experience, right, because what would I have to look forward to? What would be the point of living? Right?

And joy is my birthright? And so you know, when I think about the sheer magic that is Black existence, and I say magic because the fight and perhaps because of everything that has been set up to destroy us. Here we are not just living, not just surviving, not even just thriving, but we have the audacity to access joy. Right. Black culture brings every one joy. Who else could do it?

Who else can do it? So as much as y'all want to talk about who we are and who we aren't, right, as much as we joke about white tears, the minute something goes wrong, you have a whole life breakdown and it is over. And here we are still entertaining your ass.

But then joking amongst ourselves, right, thinking of the fact that our ancestors who were enslaved, our ancestors who were colonized, Right, you want to talk about direct oppression, direct oppression and still created culture that we still benefit from today and still laughed and joke and sang songs and danced, you know, And so for me, It's so interesting when I when I, you know, these kind of inside conversations that aren't so

inside anymore. When when black folks, you know, they walk in their respectability politics be us and and and and you know, chastise us for doing certain things, you know, in public or in mixed company, or we shouldn't be acting like this way and we should only be you don't know who your ancestors are. Respectability politics doesn't saved us. It doesn't save us. We got a whole duchess in a whole palace done, saber, done, saber. No is if it's not gonna save us, and if it's not gonna

ultimately in and of itself dismantled white supremacy, damn. And I'm still going to experience joy. You you don't get to have the complete totality of my existence in my life. You're not gonna have me feeling downtrodden every single day. Yes, this is the reality. And shit, if I'm still here, I'm going to enjoy myself in so doing it very deliberate, Yeah, testing joy, it's my birthright. You don't get to take

that from me. And if I'm honest, a lot of ways they don't expect us to experience joy, so experience they don't right in your face. Yes, fuck with you even more. Yeah, I came to that understanding late. But what I have realized and what I have learned over my years is nothing nothing make white supremacy angry angrier

than black joy. Nothing makes white racist angrier than like black people being unapologetically black and joyful and moisturized and glistening and just you know, like nothing if Nanny Nanni Bobu was a person, here we are. This is why I love, you know, younger generations. I love black creativity on social media, TikTok, Instagram memes. I live for a good meme because the worship can happen to us and

somebody who is going to turn it into a meme. Now, older generations, or perhaps more buttoned up and respectable folks might find that disrespectful. I understand where you're coming from, and still, yeah, meme out of your ugly ass white supremacist murderer is gonna be a meme about you. We're gonna create a bad story, We're gonna laugh, We're going to we have to how do we make sense of this and keep moving Karen. Y'all mad about what we did to the word, to the name Karen, you'd be

all right. And my thing is, if that is so disrupting to you, if that is the reason to have a whole identity crisis, this is why I say you couldn't beat us. Us calling you a name is enough to break you. You couldn't beat us. So yes, we're going to continue to laugh in your face because you don't get this is what I'm saying. You don't get to have that level of power over our lives. Y'all have done a lot of shit. Y'all are controlling a lot of shit. But you don't get to take my

access to joy from me. You can't have that our answers we want to. Yeah, I double down on it every day. Double down on that and rest because you're also not going to wear me out. Yeah, what they do they do? Doctor Yaba Blay. I cannot you know,

appreciate you enough. The work that you do, the voices that you lift up, the joy that you shine upon us with professional Black Girl and pretty period, the education and brilliance that you bring with your book, the one drop, and just your continued bodied of work is exemplary and I and I thank you for making the time to join us today. I woke a f the sure. Thank you for having me always. That is it for me today. Folks here on Woke ap as always. Power to the

people and to all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.