Scenario A: Sandisiwe loves wearing red lipstick, but a boy at her school told her that dark girls don’t look good wearing colour. She feels bad and now doesn’t want to be visible, whereas the boys at school think Thandi, who is lighter than her is beautiful and looks good with red lipstick.

Scenario B: Wandile and Thabiso both get detention after school, but the teacher keeps Thabiso back for longer, because he was seen as the main aggressor in the incident, even though he wasn’t. Thabiso knows that because Wandile is light-skinned, he sometimes gets better treatment than him from teachers and other students.

Does this sound believable to you? Familiar?

Colourism is a term you may or may not have heard of. By definition, it is a form of discrimination based on different shades of skin colour. Those that are lighter are often favoured or treated better than those that are darker. Terms like ‘yellowbone’, ‘team lightskin’, ‘darkie’, ‘unomhlophe’, and ‘unomnyamazana’ can be used to not only describe black people but also to judge others without thinking about their character. Colourism does not only happen amongst black people in South Africa, as coloured people may also have preferences for those that have European-like features compared to more indigenous features. But why is this a problem?

When we show ‘preference’ for people based on their skin colour, we then create ideas of someone’s personality, character and abilities purely on how they look. This is a form of discrimination. Although it is not the same as racism, colourism can still have a negative impact on how others are treated in society. Colourism also has colonial roots, whereby the lighter you were, the more you were seen as beautiful and had more power.

Colonies were countries that were ruled over by European countries like the UK and Germany. South Africa for example, was colonised by the British and Dutch at different times. This meant that the ideals of those two countries affected the way that indigenous people could navigate the colonial society.

For many people of colour, not being white meant that the closest way to access privilege was by adapting whiteness through the preference for lighter skin tones and Eurocentric features. For example in the US and other colonies around the world, slaves that were light-skinned were assigned tasks inside the house, but dark-skinned slaves were made to work out in the fields, bearing the brunt of doing harsher physical labour.

A current example of colourism is the use of bleaching creams, where women try to lighten their skin tone to be seen as ‘fairer’ and, therefore, more desirable and accepted.

Confronting the colonial legacy of colourism in South Africa, there were instances of resistance to colourist ideals. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) emerged and resonated with young black South Africans who wanted to challenge traditional white ideas and promote blackness as a positive identity – hence the phrase ‘black is beautiful’. An effective campaign they carried out was calling for legal restrictions on skin-lightening products in South Africa. This shows us that challenging colourism was an active form of resistance against apartheid.

Questioning the beauty standards that we have in society is important because we discover where they come from, and this helps us better understand how stereotypes and biases are shaped by power. This ties into how we can empower ourselves: the things we cannot control are created from the social and political systems we live in; therefore, we have to take back power by celebrating and seeing beauty in all its shades.

South Africa has one of the most diverse populations in the world, and so part of ensuring all forms of racial, social and economic equality is to question how we see ourselves, and those around us.

Tell us: Have you ever experienced colourism? What can we do to challenge colourism in our lives?