1/21/2015
Jarvis DeBerry
I'm not sure that I've ever written anything that has provoked as much discussion and emotion as the columns I wrote in June 2013 about the Bill Duke documentary "Dark Girls." That documentary was Duke's attempt to talk about black people's intra-racial war: how the darker people among us are often made to feel ugly by the lighter ones among us.
Well before the film was broadcast on the Oprah Winfrey Network, the Urban League of Greater New Orleans announced its plans to have a public viewing of the film in New Orleans. That would have been great. What better place for black people to talk about colorism than New Orleans where some people still use labels like "7th Ward" and "9th Ward" to describe what color a black person is?
But to my great disappointment, that public viewing of "Dark Girls" was canceled, and so New Orleanians who saw the film would have had to see it on their individual television sets.
After requesting comments about the documentary and black New Orleanians' thoughts about complexion, I was struck by the refusal of the light-complexioned women to let their darker-skinned sisters to control the conversation. Many of the "light girls" had their own painful stories they wanted to share.
Maybe that's why Duke has produced a follow-up documentary to "Dark Girls."
Monday evening, "Light Girls" premiered, and it puts the pain of light-complexioned women front and center.
The response, at least on the social media platforms I was reading, has been less than positive. I saw some very light girls who took issue with the documentary's superficiality. On one woman on Twitter, for example, was criticizing the film for not situating colorism squarely within the scourge that is white supremacy.
Here are a couple different pieces published Tuesday about the documentary. At TheRoot.com, Kirsten West Savali says that the painful stories some light girls have shouldn't trump the relative privilege they enjoy over darker black women. Her piece is called "It's Hard Out Here For a 'Redbone.' What Light Girls Gets Wrong... and Right."
She writes, "Though Soledad O'Brien clearly acknowledged that her color privilege has benefited her professionally, that kind of self-interrogation was rare in Light Girls. Dark-skinned black women experience systemic oppression in ways that light-skinned black women never will, and opting not to take an honest look at that was arguably a glaring omission."
At ForHarriet.com, Nneka M. Okona writes about her Nigerian father who continues to bleach his skin. Her point is obvious. If dark black people are trying to look lighter, then there must be advantages to being lighter.
In her piece, "What 'Light Girls' Missed: On Getting to the Roots of Colorism as an African Woman," Okona writes, "I know that my lighter skin is privilege in itself. I know that it has afforded me opportunities—preferential treatment in hiring, more income once employed, and others' sense of trustworthiness and comfort around me—that may not have been deemed to other women who are brown or dark-skinned. I know I've benefitted from the gaze of males who prefer a typical 'redbone' with curves like mine, and the ability to turn on the television, watch movies, or read magazines where there is never a shortage of women who look like me."
According to the online schedule for the Oprah Winfrey Network, "Dark Girls" will be broadcast Sunday at noon and "Light Girls" follows at 1:30 p.m.
Have you seen the documentary? What were your thoughts?
How well do light-skinned and dark-skinned people in New Orleans (women or otherwise) get along?
Jarvis DeBerry can be reached at jdeberry@nola.com. Follow him attwitter.com/jarvisdeberry.
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Jarvis DeBerry
In the documentary 'Light Girls,' which aired on the Oprah Winfrey Network Monday, Journalist Soledad O'Brien, shown here in an April 2014 photo, talks about benefiting from her light complexion. (Photographer: Fran Roberts)
Well before the film was broadcast on the Oprah Winfrey Network, the Urban League of Greater New Orleans announced its plans to have a public viewing of the film in New Orleans. That would have been great. What better place for black people to talk about colorism than New Orleans where some people still use labels like "7th Ward" and "9th Ward" to describe what color a black person is?
But to my great disappointment, that public viewing of "Dark Girls" was canceled, and so New Orleanians who saw the film would have had to see it on their individual television sets.
After requesting comments about the documentary and black New Orleanians' thoughts about complexion, I was struck by the refusal of the light-complexioned women to let their darker-skinned sisters to control the conversation. Many of the "light girls" had their own painful stories they wanted to share.
Maybe that's why Duke has produced a follow-up documentary to "Dark Girls."
Monday evening, "Light Girls" premiered, and it puts the pain of light-complexioned women front and center.
The response, at least on the social media platforms I was reading, has been less than positive. I saw some very light girls who took issue with the documentary's superficiality. On one woman on Twitter, for example, was criticizing the film for not situating colorism squarely within the scourge that is white supremacy.
Here are a couple different pieces published Tuesday about the documentary. At TheRoot.com, Kirsten West Savali says that the painful stories some light girls have shouldn't trump the relative privilege they enjoy over darker black women. Her piece is called "It's Hard Out Here For a 'Redbone.' What Light Girls Gets Wrong... and Right."
She writes, "Though Soledad O'Brien clearly acknowledged that her color privilege has benefited her professionally, that kind of self-interrogation was rare in Light Girls. Dark-skinned black women experience systemic oppression in ways that light-skinned black women never will, and opting not to take an honest look at that was arguably a glaring omission."
At ForHarriet.com, Nneka M. Okona writes about her Nigerian father who continues to bleach his skin. Her point is obvious. If dark black people are trying to look lighter, then there must be advantages to being lighter.
In her piece, "What 'Light Girls' Missed: On Getting to the Roots of Colorism as an African Woman," Okona writes, "I know that my lighter skin is privilege in itself. I know that it has afforded me opportunities—preferential treatment in hiring, more income once employed, and others' sense of trustworthiness and comfort around me—that may not have been deemed to other women who are brown or dark-skinned. I know I've benefitted from the gaze of males who prefer a typical 'redbone' with curves like mine, and the ability to turn on the television, watch movies, or read magazines where there is never a shortage of women who look like me."
According to the online schedule for the Oprah Winfrey Network, "Dark Girls" will be broadcast Sunday at noon and "Light Girls" follows at 1:30 p.m.
Have you seen the documentary? What were your thoughts?
How well do light-skinned and dark-skinned people in New Orleans (women or otherwise) get along?
Jarvis DeBerry can be reached at jdeberry@nola.com. Follow him attwitter.com/jarvisdeberry.
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