Yearning For Lightness

Throughout the world, an undeniable, yet perpetual force is responsible for tearing nearly everyone apart: hopelessness. Often caused by instability or vulnerability, hopelessness plagues those who refrain from combating its vile side effects. Hopelessness loves company, producing an inseparable bond between itself and self-doubt. During wartime events, it’s imperative to display some form of resistance towards the crippling despair. Although on the surface hopelessness seems insurmountable, it can be fought. In All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr emphasizes how the vital tool of resilience can be used to conquer hopelessness in all situations.

Everyone is raised within a culture with a set of customs and morals handed down by those generations before them. Most individual’s view and experience identity in different ways. During history, different ethnic groups have struggled with finding their place within society. In the mid-nineteen hundreds, African Americans faced a great deal of political and social discrimination based on the tone of their skin. After the Civil Rights Movement, many African Americans no longer wanted to be identified by their African American lifestyle, so they began to practice African culture by taking on African hairdos, African-influenced clothing, and adopting African names. By turning away from their roots, many African Americans embraced a culture that was not inherited, thus putting behind the unique and significant characteristics

Beauty is an important aspect of many women’s lives, often dictating their everyday behaviours. Women are held to narrow, unrealistic expectations of what they should look like; these expectations being portrayed through beauty ideals and trends. Although these trends, and the advertisements they are promoted through, seem relatively harmless, they can often reinforce racism and become their own system of oppression. Throughout cultures, dark-skin is seen as unwanted and unappealing, whereas light-skin is valued and privileged. This white supremacist ideal is propagated through these various beauty trends and their advertising, inseminating privilege towards lighter skin shades. The beauty trend of using skin-bleaching creams to lighten one’s

According to McIntosh’s suggestion, “we should acknowledge enormous unseen dimensions, talk about the obliviousness advantages, and raise our daily awareness on the perquisites of being light-skinned.” McIntosh’s approaches are characterized as reasonable to resolve the issue. By listing down every advantage she takes for granted, she is raising awareness in the society. By

Its cosmetic department may face a similar situation to Gerdeman’s article where skin color bias is promoted through advertising. Skin whitening creams can be found in the cosmetic department along with propaganda to encourage customers to buy their merchandise. To ensure that there is no bias portrayed in the media, managers must reconsider how to portray an impartial view on fairer skin tones leading to happiness. If I were to lead the marketing campaign for skin lightening products at Macy’s, I would equally promote the product for restoring an individual’s natural complexion from damages of the sun. By taking this course of action, there is no particular skin color that is favored by the Macy’s establishment.

Defining someone by their skin color is an everyday phenomenon. Many people see a specific shade of skin and believe they know exactly how that person is going to speak, carry, and illustrate themselves. It seems to be embedded in one’s head at a young age to have specific views given by family, friends, and coworkers such as, believing interracial relationships are immoral, or it being acceptable to judge others according to their skin color. In the articles “Race is a Four Letter Word” by Teja Arboleda and “Mr. Z” by M. Carl Holman, the color of the authors skin plays a substantial role on how they are treated and perceived. Living in a society that doesn’t understand one’s culture can make their life extremely difficult.

As the research continues it becomes ever more important to discuss how exactly the differing pigmentation of one race of people actually occurs, because I feel that it has an effect on the way colorism is handled throughout the African American community. There are two ways in which a person of African descent can be of a lighter complexion; the first being amalgamation, which is the coming together of both the black and white races and reproducing to make a mulatto or mixed race child and the second is the use of cosmetic creams in attempt to bleach one’s skin until they too appear mulatto (Dorman 48). This is relevant because, it shows the extremes that people are willing to go to reach the highest plateau of social acceptance. Many of these creams were painful acidic chemicals slowly burning away the pigmentation as people slept, while others were considered mild abrasive materials used to “gently” scrape away dark pigments (Dorman

Everyone is raised within a culture with a set of customs and morals handed down by those generations before them. Most individual’s view and experience identity in different ways. During history, different ethnic groups have struggled with finding their place within society. In the mid-nineteen hundreds, African Americans faced a great deal of political and social discrimination based on the tone of their skin. After the Civil Rights Movement, many African Americans no longer wanted to be identified by their African American lifestyle, so they began to practice African culture by taking on African hairdos, African-influenced clothing, and adopting African names. By turning away from their roots, many African Americans embraced a

In the exceptional novel All the Light We Cannot See, author Anthony Doerr, tells the story of two young adults whom had to experience life during World War II.

As some may say, “If you’re light, you’re alright. If you’re brown, stick around. And if you’re Black, get to the back.” Colorism has become a popular practice in the African American culture. The praise for being fair­skinned is often seen as being a light­hearted compliment that degrades the other half of the spectrum. In the article, “Black Identity” by Kathy Russell, Russell researches and proves how the negative effects of colorism is ever present in the African American culture and is ingrained into their youth. Colorism is not a new debatable topic but the effects of such continues to evolve. Colorism in the African American Community, specifically, needs to be addressed and dealt with so that they may unite as a community with the purpose of understanding how the present is in correlation with the past, decrease the popularity of color­based self­hate within the African American community so they may eradicate the racial issues present in the judicial system, and teach African American youth to fight against colorism and its negative effects so that they can create positive, proud future for the African American community.

Could she get him away? Would he fall for that long, wavy beautiful hair? Why take chances?” The language employed in the Hi-Ja hair advertisement was intended to provoke shame among African American women and instill fear of competition from more glossy haired, beautiful women. Advertisers intentionally employed this technique to convince anxious female readers that they needed to buy more beauty products in order to keep their men happy and faithful. Additionally, when describing the Hi-Ja hair cream, the advertisers were careful to include that the product was white in color. The advertiser’s decision to include this seemingly insignificant detail painfully reveals the racialized nature of early twentieth-century African American beauty culture and advertising. African American beauty advertisements overwhelmingly correlated lighter skin and straightened hair “with femininity, beauty, and romantic

Many black girls go thru social identity issues on a daily basis. Skin color has created division even within black people because fairer skin tones are highly praised in the Negro community. Discrimination is used everywhere against black girls with a deeper skin pigment per example, makeup brands neglect the commercialization of darker shades of foundation, hair products for women of color

The idolization of lighter skin colour that has occurred within black communities within America, as mentioned earlier, stems from colonization and has persisted into the modern age through racialized beauty standards, as well as economic and social opportunities. Due to their perceived proximity to white individuals within the racial hierarchy, lighter skinned black Americans are considered to be more beautiful and are presented with the opportunity to receive a higher income and level of education than darker skinned individuals based on their physical appearance, as examined by Margaret L. Hunter. Nevertheless, these individuals are still barred from reaching the same levels of opportunity as white individuals, which is depicted through a lower employment and income rate, indicating their inability to transcend beyond their social racial category. Instead, there appears to be an unhealthy racial hierarchy created within the black race which stigmatizes and divides coloured individuals from collaborating, as per the wishes of early colonizers in my perception. Through accommodating to the desires of early European colonizers, colorism exhibits tendencies of Nobles conceptual incarceration, in which coloured individuals are still submissive and uncritical towards their reasons of perceiving lighter skin as being more socially acceptable based on a European

We often connect ourselves to the world through our appearances. One of the first characteristics we notice about another human is the color of their skin. It is unavoidable, as the largest organ of the body, it covers and highlights our individual features and forms a protective wall against the elements. There is no escape from the social repercussions our pigmentation causes no matter what range of the very broad spectrum of color we fall into. I have never thought so much about the genetic and social evolution of skin and its properties until I read Nina Jablonski’s Living Color: The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color. This book encompasses, in great detail, how our skin has evolved, adapted and mutated throughout time and in what

Colorism is the prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group. Colorism has been one of the most prominent dividing factors amongst multitudes of ethnicities and cultures. Lighter skin has been associated with higher levels of intelligence, wealth, attractiveness, and more. As a result, those of darker complexions have undergone drastic and harmful measures in order to meet these restrictive beauty standards. Advertisements exhibit men and women with creamy white skin and silky straight hair. Companies have profited off of colorism by selling skin bleaching and hair straightening products. The damage colorism has created amongst communities physically and psychologically is deplorable.