I’m North African and every time I refer to myself as African I get called “colonizer”. I was born white with afro hair (a mix of destroying my hair over the years and God knows what transformed with time into a wavy mess), my brother is black with green eyes. We’re considered “racially ambiguous” in the outside world and the small percentage of times in which we get represented the person who did that is being called out for “being racist”. In my own country we’re just common people, pretty regular and we’re not any different from the mass.
This is sad to say but it just shows me how people knows nothing about Africa’s history. Yeah, we’ve been colonized, most probably I have mixed blood too and that’s why I’m kinda white but WAS IT MY CHOICE? Did I choose to be born like this? Did I choose to have, I don’t know 1? Of my ancestors colonizer?
A friend of mine is a brown Ethiopian. She gets called colonizer as well while people don’t know that during the British colonization Indian people got exported as slaves so her family lived there for generations.
I just wish that this whole “original” debate could stop. Africa is a huge continent, you can’t expect me to look like someone from the extreme south when I’m literally from the extreme North. I think that none in this world is 100% from a place, we’re all mixed somehow.
So to make it short I’m an african arab but both africans and arabs hate us and they don’t want us to be like them.
So yeah, I’m nothing I think lol
So you’re half Arab and Half Black?
No, Morocco is considered an “arabized” country so we talk in Arabic and we have a similar culture (the majority of moroccans call themselves arabs too) but middle easterners refuse to consider us arabs too.
My parents are both from Morocco but my dad is from the desert so he’s black
I really want Normani to be successful because she’s so talented! But this industry has been proven time and time again that if you are not only a black but a dark-skinned black woman you have to work harder. Like the last big black pop star we had was Rihanna and she isn’t releasing music anymore! Besides the only black/mixed pop girl we have in the UK is Mabel. We have Mahalia and Jorja Smith but they’re more R&B and not as big as they deserve to be. As for dark skinned and brown skinned girls we have RAY BLK, Lady Leshurr, Little Simz, Ms Banks… all paid dust!
These videos are pretty good at dissecting colourism in the music industry:
And don’t get me started on how Asian representation in the music industry in the UK and US in basically non-existent. M.I.A was ROBBED!
bump!
Bump
This is a small take but telling dark-skin girls that they’re pretty won’t fix colourism. It just reinforces “hey, you can achieve the standard of beauty too” but does nothing to reevaluate or reform said standard of beauty or dismantle the embedded colourism that says dark-skin is unattractive in the first place. There are pretty dark skin girls out there but there’s really no point saying “we’re all beautiful” if society doesn’t treat us as such 
Bump!
Precisely!
Bump
Featurism is another major problem
What’s that? Never heard of this before.
Discrimination from colorism based on how Euro-centric a POC’s features are (nose, eyes, lips)
Oh yeah, that.
Yup.
Bump!
And also I hate the fact dark skinned girls are dehumanized, the black community has a serious f*cking problem and we try to deny it by saying
“We are all black”
Like, who said we weren’t all black?
Yikesss eww
They love casting canon dark skin characters as light skin characters.
2 of them are white…
mmmmmm yh