Colourism.

Colourism

Stacy Leigh Ross, Artist and Creative Director. UAL (Alumni)

The Story behind the Art

Almost everyone who’s seen this painting has tentatively asked me… “Is that sperm?” The answer is Yes! This painting is in fact a lot of sperm, each carrying different shades of black skin and different ethnic mixes that result in a veritable pantone chart from the palest pink to the richest dark brown.

I was born in Trinidad & Tobago. In the Caribbean, there are so many names for the varying shades of black skin, that you’d be hard pressed to keep up. Not to mention, all those names vary a bit on each island and evolve over time! Then to add insult to injury, everyone’s definition of what these colourist terms mean is a little bit different. For example, over the course of my 26 years growing up in Trinidad, I have been called Reds, High Brown and Spanish Brown, each term referencing a different shade of brown skin and sometimes even the texture of my hair.

Intellectually I understand how colourism began in the Caribbean. I’ve heard the stories of how enslaved mothers would urge their daughters to catch the plantation owner’s eye (or his son) so that their bloodline got paler and paler and ensure better opportunities for the next generation. Why damn your child to slaving in the fields when they could slave in the house, get marginally ‘better’ treatment and perhaps a little education too? In a sick twisted way, I get it. In that era, a lighter skinned child had a better chance to achieve more in life. That’s how the system was built by the colonials and that, unfortunately, is how it remains in more ways than many Caribbean people realise.

Still, it took me reading JA Rogers’ “Race & Sex” to finally grasp the meaning behind some of my great grandmother’s mutterings. Comments like “do you want to plait or do you want to knit” referring to the hair type of the children I might have should I bring home a ‘nappy-headed’ boyfriend. Or “His father really pull him out with that straight nose” referring to a cousin who was a shade too dark in her opinion but at least had a ‘straight’ nose that would help him look less black.

At age 11, I couldn’t wait to straighten my hair, it was a rite of passage that every black girl I knew looked forward to with joyous delight. How glorious to finally get rid of those horrible kinky plaits and look beautiful (i.e. whiter). I continued to chemically process my hair until I was 36, only then realising for the first time, the beauty of my natural curls. Travesty.

I remember too my best friend relating how teachers would ask the class, as a joke, “where’s Simmons?” Whenever he stood in front of the blackboard because his skin was so dark. And later, how that same friend was given a bank job behind closed doors because up until I was 18, it was rare to see a dark skinned black person in any client-facing bank jobs.

Now remember, I grew up in a country where non-white people are the majority! Slavery was abolished centuries ago, and yet the conditioning of colourism still ruled (rules?) Our attitudes, beliefs, recruitment decisions, teaching practices, preferred hairstyles and so much more.

So I get how colourism in the Caribbean started and evolved, but I also understand basic human biology. I know that given the vast mix of ethnicities in the Caribbean, the chances of me being born the complexion I am is very, very random ... sort of like figuring out which one of a gazillion sperm will manage to fertilise the egg.

My maternal grandmother and my brother are very dark-skinned, my paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather were very lightskinned (with the coveted ‘good’ hair). My heritage apparently includes, East Indian, Chinese, Scottish, Irish, Spanish, Warao Indian and the obvious African heritage, which I’ve only recently learned is likely to be Igbo and Dahomey. Basically I could have been any shade between pale peach and “black til ah blue”.

With this in mind, I set out to create a semi-abstract snapshot of how luck-of-the draw complexion is for Black people in the Caribbean.

My aim was to point out how senseless it is to be obsessed (whether proud or prejudiced) with the shade of anyone’s black skin. The message – you could just as easily have been very pale or very dark, your skin tone should be irrelevant to anything other than the amount of sunblock you need.

Hidden amongst this colour spectrum of sperm hoping to ‘win the race’ are various colourist terms used across the islands, including Trinidad & Tobago, St Lucia, Barbados, St Kitts & Nevis. These are the definitions (as I know them) for these terms.

Darkie – a person with dark brown skin High Brown – a person with light brown skin, but not light enough to pass for white Reds – a person with light brown skin, light enough to pass for white Negs – a person with very dark brown skin, almost black. Or as I’ve heard older generations say, “black til yuh blue”. Shabeen – a person with skin that is light enough to pass for white, who also has hair that is some shade of blonde or very light brown that might be close to their complexion. This term especially refers to those whose hair is ‘nappy’ despite it being a colour that would traditionally be associated with white skin and hair texture. I hope that the painting Colourism can offer a visual representation of how incredibly random skin tone is. More than that, I hope this visual will help us to see this truly archaic divide-and-conquer system for what it is – utterly ridiculous!