It’s not my fault. So you can’t blame me. I didn’t do it and have no idea how it happened. It didn’t take more than an hour after they pulled her out from between my legs to realize something was wrong. Really wrong. She was so black she scared me. Midnight black, Sudanese black. I’m light-skinned, with good hair, what we call high yellow, and so is Lula Ann’s father. Ain’t nobody in my family anywhere near that color.
From Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child
You’re listening to Remarkable Receptions—a podcast about popular and critical responses to African American novels and more.
Who wants to have a serious, ongoing conversation about colorism? That is, who wants to engage in discussions about intra-racial bias – about the negative views some Black people have toward Black people with darker skin? Colorism is a touchy subject in part because of the difficulty some people have reckoning with the interlocking advantages and disadvantages linked to skin color among a racial group.
For many decades now, Black novelists have dared to prompt discussions about colorism by presenting narratives that highlight the ways people with lighter skin enjoy benefits unavailable to people with darker skin.
In James Weldon Johnson’s 1912 The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, the unnamed central character has a skin color that is so light that he can pass for white and distance himself from Black people with darker skin. Johnson’s point is that racism in America is so prevalent that Black people with a choice would choose to conceal their racial identity and live as white people.
There’s a scene in Zora Neale Hurston’s 1934 Their Eyes Were Watching God where a Black man physically abuses his wife. Rather than criticize the man for beating his wife, the man’s friends point out that he should not beat a light skin woman because marks might show. It’s fine, they say, to beat dark skin Black women, who are viewed capable of withstanding such treatment.
In her 2015 novel God Help the Child, Toni Morrison presents a light skin Black woman character who finds the dark skin of her newborn child deeply disturbing. How disturbing? The mother briefly considers killing her child. That’s what the mother’s views of her dark skin child led her to contemplate.
Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, and other Black authors have produced memorable, widely discussed scenes and narratives that can prompt us to have tough, important conversations about colorism.
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This episode was written by Howard Rambsy. The episode was edited by Elizabeth Cali.