In pop culture news last week, Cardi B made musical history by becoming the first female rapper to snag a number one spot in the charts in the last 20 years. Lauryn Hill held the title all this time and now Cardi B takes the baton for the summer hit, Bodak Yellow.

The opinions have been divided with most people celebrating the young artist for her amazing achievement, but one conversation sparked my interest. These conversations started with, “Why not Nicki Minaj?” or “What about Missy Eliot?” and I have to say, I agree. Without trashing Cardi B as a woman who’s hustled hard for her career and earned a well-deserved response for her epic rap game, the question is why have other female rap artists, some who have been in the game for a lot longer with more influence in the hip-hop community, not received the same hype?

Infamous rapper Azealia Banks added her two cents to the debate and made some tricky points, but a lot of what she had to say made sense. Basically, what she was saying is that darker artists, like her, who don’t fit into the standards of European beauty don’t get the same recognition as their fairer counterparts. Are Cardi B and other artists with a light-skin complexion getting ahead because they’re seen as more attractive than darker women?

White has always been seen as “right” under the umbrella of racism – that’s why actresses, musicians, and artists are more “sellable” if they’re light-skinned. Think of the familiar, light brown tones of Beyoncé, Rihanna, Halle Berry, and Mariah Carey – all successful women of colour in their own right, but they have certain perks and privileges from being lighter than dark-skinned women. One of these advantages is being “accessible” to a mainstream market so they excel a lot farther than darker women. A way of describing this privilege of light girls getting ahead is “colourism”.

You can see the effects of colourism in magazines, music videos and beauty products. Colourism exists because of anti-blackness that twists our ideas of beauty to mean anything that’s not “black”. Even more worrying is that there are skin-bleaching products that can make your skin lighter, even though bleaching something as delicate as your skin has been known to cause severe damage because of toxic chemicals.

But who can blame some of these women for being insecure enough to take desperate measures? We all want to feel like we belong and the only time we see pictures of black women, it’s a very typical image of what seems “attractive” – straight hair, brown skin, a small, angular nose with a small figure that magically maintains curves in all the right places. There are all sorts of expectations of what black women should look like and sometimes it’s easy to feel like you don’t fit in.

As I said, we should celebrate Cardi B for her achievement as a woman who has paid her dues in a sexist industry, but we also know that it’s easy for people to give her, and others like her, a pass for being beautiful in the ways we’re taught to define beauty. We only see light woman of colour being celebrated in the spotlight but often, darker women are left in the shadows. It’s time to give some shine to all types of women.

Have you noticed any instances of colourism?