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Onyeomachi Okoro Prof. Collin L-Mattson English 114 20 December 2013

Twelve shades of Brown In the process of growing up and becoming an adult in America I have inevitably come to see the world for what it really is. I am no longer able to hide behind the nave bubble that I have been kept under for years by my loving parents. In the recent times I have seen and experienced one of the many problems that still occurs in our country and around the world and has developed into something that I have recently become very interested in. I have always been interested when it comes to the topic of race and the subtopics that always seem to follow it. My goal is to investigate the topic of discrimination of darker skinned people in America and other parts of the world. What I already knew about this topic is what drove me to want to do more research on it. The things I see every day are a constant reminder of how not much has changed regarding racism, prejudice, has and all of that. We may look like we have made much progress in America, and dont get me wrong we have, but it seems like with the way things are going the progress is not enough. I still see people making jokes that are based on the stereotyping of lighter skinned verses dark-skinned individuals. I still see commercials on TV and models on the runway having a predominantly greater white percentage than any other race. The past hate that

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whites had for other races has even lead to those races hating themselves and thus trying to assimilate to the white culture of America in order to not be looked down on. I still believe that discrimination is alive and well and it may not seem like it on the surface but when you examine all aspects of our society today your will then see that this issues is far from being over and will take a lot more before it even has the possibility of disappearing for good. What I did not know about this topic was why after all these years of progress and change do people still value lighter skin as better than dark skin. It is easy to look past the idea that there still are people who are prejudice especially when you live in an area where it seems diverse and tolerant but, there are. Discrimination and prejudice in America started way before blacks were enslaved, it started when Christopher Columbus sailed over from Spain and invading the alreadyinhabited lands of America. Instead of kindly accepting that the land was not theirs, the Spaniards instead stripped the Native Americans of their home and dignity and forced them to assimilate to their culture. Now, it was not as if the Spaniards sailed across the Atlantic Ocean with the primary intention of taking already claimed land, infecting the natives with disease, and wiping out their ancestry and culture. All of that stemmed from the desire to obtain power, something that can be understood universally. Without the desire for power and control racism would not be an issue in the least bit. In society there is always a hierarchy, for example, a boss and employee relationship or a parent and child relationship. What both a boss and a parent figure have in common is that in the societal hierarchy they are at the top meaning they obtain more power than those below them. Power gives those who have it the ability to control anything and everything in their favor. That is what drove the Spaniards to overtake the Native Americans, the desire to be economically powerful. That same desire to strengthen the economy lead to the enslavement of Africans.

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American society was much more economically and technologically advanced than that of the countries in Africa. Therefore, whites felt superior forming that racist mentality towards Africans and basically any race that eventually made their way into the U.S. This topic is of interest to me because this is something that has an effect on me as well as many other people of various ethnic groups as well. Although, my ancestors were not slaves in America, I am still an African female and everything that pertains to the black or ethnic community involves me. I want to do research and understand why many ethnicities of color in some cases want to obtain lighter skin and in other cases look down on those of their culture with darker complexions. I believe that the variety of skin complexions is what makes us so unique and is something to celebrate and not hate on. Knowing more about this topic will also help me to educate myself on what and why some people feel as though it is better to have a lighter complexion verses a darker one. This topic can and will make a difference in my life just by opening my eyes to the way that people think and what they perceive as more attractive and with that I can hopefully, through my extensive research, change their minds and also open their minds to the fact that we are all beautiful no matter what shade we are. I also feel that it will give people confidence to feel good in the skin they are in instead of desiring to be something they are not. People should not be judged or given certain privileges because of how dark or light their complexion. It is the responsibility of all of us to be Beginning my investigation I tried to base my research on a variety of different types of racism and from there work my way down to how to also researching how all of that affects our society and the way we perceive others. While that sounded like a good idea at first, it proved to be a little more hectic than I thought. I wanted to talk about all the different aspects of racism in

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order to show all different sides besides the one that is usually talked about- racism that is directed towards African Americans. I thought it would be a good idea to generalize my research so that I could then break it down and cover all bases. I realized that by doing that my paper would end up being less focused and would result in a messy and unorganized paper. I decided that I would instead focus on the skin tones of specific ethnic groups, mainly those that have darker skin complexions, and talk about how racism has affected their mentality and their desire to be fairer skinned. I began looking searching for articles and came across some that talked about skin bleaching and how it was popular in different places. From the definition taken from the internet dictionary, Skin bleaching is the process of using bleaching agents to lighten the skin's pigment. Skin bleaching can be used to lighten up or treat discoloration of the skin but, has become a controversial topic because it is also used to lighten big sections of the body in order to appear a different skin tone. Digging deeper into my search I found that skin bleaching is very popular among African and Asian cultures. I came across an article by Saksith Saiyasombut & Siam Voices discussing the craze that Thai women had with skin bleaching products. The strange part was that the fad was not just bleaching their bodies but, also whitening their pubic areas. The question that surrounded the article were similar to the big question I had in my mind as well- Why do these women want to be so white? The answer I got was not the answer I thought I would get. Thai womens desire to be lighter has nothing to do with looking like Caucasian women. Their ideal of beautiful is white, pretty, and Chineselooking. More recently their ideal has shifted towards Japanese and Korean women. Although their influence is not drawn from European culture they still have the same mentality that they doLighter skin is associated with success, opportunity, and status.

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I became more successful with my search when I came across a WordPress blog by Yoknyam Dabale. Unlike Thai women who bleach their skin to look more like Chinese and Japanese women, African and African Americans bleach their skin for a slightly different reason. Africans were colonized by not only Europeans but Arabs as well. Their culture was seen as ugly which caused Africans major psychological problems that are still being dealt with to this day. African Americans go through many changes in order to blend in more with European culture; some bleach their skin, perm their hair, or even wear wigs or weaves that are different texture than their natural hair. Common African features such as dark skin, kinky/curly hair, wide nostrils, and full lips was for the longest time looked down upon because it was the opposite of the traits that Europeans had themselves. In the social world African Americans with lighter skin or even mixed raced Africans are usually the ones who get to speak for all blacks of African descent. Many times children who are darker are bullied for looking too African as if it is a thing to be ashamed of. This is what causes internalized self-hate and what causes people of African descent to feel ashamed of who they are. From all that I have discovered I can say that I am not much more educated than I was before. I found that lighter skin is valued in other parts of the world such as in Asian culture, but, is not done for reasons that I assumed. I was also unaware that they thought that having white vaginas was a huge craze and seen as being clean. On the other hand, the information that I found most interesting had to do with the concept of internalized selfhate that is something Africans living in America are still learning to cope with. It is quite nave of people to think that after all the years of oppression, racism and discrimination is now dead and gone. I believe that if African Americans can change the way they view themselves and realize that they must embrace

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all that makes them unique, no matter what shade of brown they are, than they can move forward despite the mentalities of those who disagree.

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Works Cited Dabale, Yoknyam. Why do Africans Bleach their Beautiful Dark Skin? Wordpress. April 22 2012. Web. Dec 16 2013. Saiyasombut, Saksith & Voices, Siam. Thailands skin whitening craze: How far will it go? Asian Correspondent. Sept 27 2012. Web. Dec 16 2013.