THREAD: Light skin privilege is a thing.

This is me and my mother. My dad is a dark skinned man, yet I came out lighter than them both. Both my parents are Black. While I don’t have mixed privilege (yes, that is a thing), I do have light skin privilege. Let’s chat.

Mixed privilege is step above light skin privilege in some cases. Some. But we’re not talking about that. I am a light skin Black woman. So what does that mean? Well, for one thing - I’m not seen as dangerous. I can be, but this is mostly NOT the case. I am mostly seen as...

The butt of the joke, the thief, the token, and so on. Yes, I have been called many racial slurs, have been harassed, neglected and been treated like trash. But there’s more to it than that. I’m Black - However, rarely am I seen as dangerous. And that matters.

Black people who are brown skin, but especially dark skin are seen as dangerous. We see this in the many cases of Black people being murdered by police, by the lady clutching her purse, by Karen’s calling the cops on innocent Black men and so on. They are seen as a threat.

This is a form of racism that has been used to keep Black people from being seen as human, but it is mostly applied to dark skin ppl. The further from whiteness, the worse you’re treated. People in the Black community do it as well and it’s called, colorism.

No, I don’t believe you can be colorist to light skin people if you’re dark skin. Prejudice? Maybe, idk. But, colorism is systemic, just like racism. You can’t be racist to white people and you can’t be colorist to light skin people. But that’s my opinion.

I mentioned gender. What does my gender have to do with anything? Well, as a light skin woman I have an advantage on dark skin men especially. As a woman, misogynists don’t see me as a threat and my skin color helps. They see me as the fragile and acceptable n*gro.

Men are seen as “stronger” and “angrier/more aggressive,” so add that on to being seen as less than human by white ppl and you have a big problem. Hence, our darker Black men being killed disproportionately. I ain’t never seen a light skin nigga on the news. Tho I know...

It happens. It doesn’t happen as often. So my Black family needs to be more aware of our privileges and how we allow each other to be treated/how we treat each other. We gotta step up! Now white people and non Black ppl, this is for you:

Some of y’all have found out about light skin privilege and have started neglecting light skin Black people. Don’t do that. You’re still white/non Black. That’s still racist. Don’t ignore one in favor of another - that’s tokenism. Don’t go tokenizing Dark skin ppl. Don’t do it.

HOWEVER - you need to check your biases against Dark skin ppl. Period. Don’t ignore Black peoples work or their success. The point is to treat everyone equally. Stop clutching your pearls when dark skin people speak or have opinions. Stop calling the cops on them and sentencing-

them to death. Stop assuming the worst about them. And that goes for everyone. Stop doing that! There is privilege in lighter skin. But there is the ultimate amount of privilege in white skin. Lights skin folks, stop denying it. Mixed folks - YOU TOO. So watch yourself. Everyone.

Thoughts?