Unlearning Colorism

I think every Filipino girl has their fair share of horror stories about Titas who were much too grown and much too busy to have the time to be commenting on the appearance of girls who aren’t even theirs. To no fault but their own toxic upbringing, they judged anything and everything that caught their attention. Weight gain, weight loss, academics—the list goes on and on. However, there was one thing in particular that they would point out about without fail. Even more outside of my control than my fluctuating weight and static height—it was my skin color. Brown and so unlike the porcelain white skin that they believed to be so much more beautiful, the guilt I felt for being “dark” caused me to be so hyper focused on my skin color. It was a toxic mindset that caused me to belittle myself and rate my worth based on my degree of whiteness. Eventually, I would learn that this way of thinking that is so deeply ingrained into Asian culture has a name and history that’s also deeply rooted into racism. It’s called colorism. 

Now, what is colorism? Defined by the urban dictionary as “prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone,” it is an intraracial issue that is often brushed aside in many different cultures. Besides Asia, it is also a major issue among the African-American community due to the privilege that comes with having lighter-skinned or being able to appear “white-passing.” In Asia, however, it is often equated to being upper-class because it meant having a profession that did not require working outside under the sun, like farming. This beauty standard has existed for centuries and is the reason why skin bleaching/skin lightening is so popular in Asia, but the dangerous implications that come with this way of thinking should not go unnoticed. If white equaled pure and beautiful, then black equaled evil and ugly. This translates poorly into the perception that Asia as a whole has towards those who are naturally darker skinned. 

As I mentioned before, every Filipino girl has a fair share of horror stories regarding the things Titas would say about their appearance. A personal experience of mine would be when I was in middle school and on a ship in the Philippines with my parents and brother. We were on our way back to our hometown in the Philippines and we ran into an old friend of my mother’s. It was my first time ever meeting her, but she did not hold back at all when she looked at me. With a dramatic gasp and eyes filled with horror, she asked my mother why I was so dark. It was a harsh and accusatory tone that caught both my mother and I off guard, and even though I know now that I had no reason to feel bad about my appearance, I felt a wave of guilt wash over me at that very moment. There are many things I’m sorry for making myself go through, but one of the worst things I’ve done to myself was playing into others’ colorist agenda.

For more than half my life, I’ve struggled to accept my identity and the way I looked compared to my peers. Born in the Philippines, I came over to the States when I was 2 years old and lived with my parents, older sibling, and grandma in Wilmington. We were poor and lived in the cheapest room the apartment complex had to offer, but I recall those memories as some of the happiest times of my life. From waking up every morning with my grandma, to scribbling on the walls with a sharpie, it was a sheltered and simple life that only lasted for a year. By the time we moved to our new home in Newark and I was old enough to start school, my perspective on life changed. All of a sudden, I was shoved into social play with peers who looked nothing like me.  However, the comments over my skin never really occurred during school, but at my own home or surrounded by my cousins and family friends. My skin tone was always hanging fruit for them whenever we felt like poking fun at each other, but it was an insecurity of mine that I should’ve set boundaries around. Additionally, growing up in a very white country and attending a PWI for most of my life, it felt like the only way to be seen as successful or acceptable was to be white or lighter. 

By the time I grew into my skin and learned to treat myself better, being tanned was, and still is, all the rage. Instead of being made fun of by my cousins for my darker-skin, they were jealous of it and asked how I got so tan. Or, people would compliment me for being so tan, even in the winter. It was a confusing time for me at first, but it eventually led to me making an entire research paper my senior year of high school about skin lightening and the perception of beauty among Asian-American teens. It was a year-long project that immersed me into the research of the history of colorism, which made me embrace my skin even more. I’m no longer the little 9-year-old girl who would pick up the peach skin-toned crayon when coloring pictures I drew of myself, but she was a part of that journey of self-reflection and self-appreciation.