Dark Girls And Structural Racism Essay

Dark Girls discusses colorism and structural racism. Many personal experiences are recounted by African-American women, discussing the pressures from strangers, peers, and even family to be light-skinned. An experiment also showed a little girl selecting the drawing of a white girl for the positive traits (beauty, intelligence) and the darkest girl for the negative traits. A psychologist highlights the fact that colorism is not predispositioned; rather, societal pressures like the media subconsciously plants colorism in the mind. A Girl Like Me highlights the beauty standards rampant in African/African-American cultures. Inherent “black” features - natural hair, darker skin - are perceived as undesirable in communities. Colorism is common and many women attempt to “fix” their skin by using skin-bleaching techniques; natural hair is also seen as unkempt and girls are expected to relax and/or perm hair. Changing black features to emulate white features is deeply embedded in slavery and oppression, as African-American communities lose their African identity and heritage over time. The clip also expanded on an experiment conducted using African-American children and baby dolls, in which children perceived the white doll as more attractive and linked to positive characteristics. The experiment showed how racism and colorism is embedded in humans from a young age. Killing Us Softly 4 points out the major sexist and sexual issues in modern advertising. Jean Kilbourne first focused…