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What if ... instead of questioning Rashida’s Blackness and also taking a big heavy dip into white supremacist race science lingo like “phenotype” ... we talked about how Kenya Barris always casts light skinned people and that is a fucked up fetish?
Barris’s colorism is, first and foremost, harmful to dark skinned women who are erased entirely from his universe. The fetishizing of light skinned women is also gross.
But look, beef with the colorism, not Rashida’s right to claim her heritage.
But look, beef with the colorism, not Rashida’s right to claim her heritage.
Also, reifying race science isn’t the big insightful strike against colorism that you think it is. People who are part of the Black community, including valued leaders, have long come in a lot of different shades, hair textures and nose and lip shapes.
There is a word that describes why, despite all being Black, we have different experiences based on our appearance: colorism.
Attacking Rashida’s Blackness and using race science to do it does fuck all to end colorism. Especially if you do that but don’t talk about colorism!!!!!
Attacking Rashida’s Blackness and using race science to do it does fuck all to end colorism. Especially if you do that but don’t talk about colorism!!!!!
I also HAVE to point out that people are bending over backwards to impugn a woman for something a man did 
Anyway, hi, I’m an expert on both race in science and scientific racism and race science and I will gladly give you some homework if you have questions and are not an asshole about them but I will not take the time to run circles around you because I have real work to do today
Here’s a fantastic new paper by fellow expert on race in science @Hood_Biologist which I think delineates why organizing ourselves around superficial understandings of phenotype doesn’t actually get at how structural racism and racialism operates https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1158&=&context=humbiol_preprints&=&sei-redir=1&referer=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.bing.com%252Fsearch%253Fq%253DIsolation%252Bby%252BDistance%252Band%252Bthe%252BProblem%252Bof%252Bthe%252BTwenty-First%252BCentury%2526form%253DAPIPH1%2526PC%253DAPPL#search=%22Isolation%20by%20Distance%20Problem%20Twenty-First%20Century%22
I think one of the most powerful points they make in the abstract is this sentence: "Race is a heredity and inheritance system based on rules of partus sequitur ventrum and hypodescent."
In these discussions, we tend to focus on hypodescent but not partus sequitur ventrum.
In these discussions, we tend to focus on hypodescent but not partus sequitur ventrum.
Traditionally "partus sequitur ventrum" is a legal concept involving slave/free status based on who your mother was. Part of what's brilliant about Shay's theoretical work here is tracing how it operates now in 2020. *Who your parents are shapes your racial experience.*
A quick and easy example of this: a light skinned Black child is still shaped by the experience of watching or being party to anti-Blackness + colorism that stops their darker skinned parent from accessing resources and rights.
For example, perhaps your mom tried to get a motel room for the two of you, and she was denied one because she is undeniably Black. Or perhaps she was denied adequate health care because she is Black. You are shaped by the individual and systemic racism she faces, too.
I literally can't help the people who read this thread and then wrote a tweet along the lines of "can't we discuss [words that define "colorism" but don't include the word "colorism']?"
I can't help you. I'm literally saying let's discuss colorism.
I can't help you. I'm literally saying let's discuss colorism.
Some of y'all just want to beef and feel powerful, and I'm not interested. 
