Sulwe
By Lupita Nyong’o
Below are some poems speaking to colorism, a term Alice Walker is said to have coined to describe “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color.” Ibram X. Kendi expands on this idea in his book How To Be An Antiracist, and in this essay, “Colorism as Racism: Garvey, Du Bois and the Other Color Line,” where he says: “Colorism, like all forms of racism, rationalizes color inequities with racist ideas, by claiming the inequities between dark and light-skinned people are not due to discrimination against dark-skinned people, but the inferiorities of dark skinned people.”
“An Ode to the Dark Skin Black Girl” by Eliyah Roberts
I look down at my hands
And all I see is dirt colored flesh
I mean my skin is the color of soil
So of course I would know how deep underground I was created
The oils that run through my veins and the copper under my nail beds
Never seem to expire
Because my body is my greatness
And it’s as tough as the indestructible souls that came before me
The golden hues that are painted on my thighs
And the curly cues that were put upon my head for purpose
Have more body than the ocean’s strongest waves and are hotter than the world’s volcanic
lava
Underground I am one with nature
With the ruins all around my figure
We got diamonds embedded in our minds and golden mines implanted in our eyes
You can even say we are the golden children
Because us black girls were one of nature’s greatest creations
And I’m talking to the girls with the deep dark skin who hide under the trees
I’m talking about the girls whose words sound like luscious, sweet honey straight from honey bees
I’m talking about the girls whose skin twinkles in the moonlight, it just glitters and gleams
I’m talking about the girls whose skin is smooth as butter, and smells of rich cocoa
I’m talking to the girls whose strides overflow with rhythm, like you can hear a beat in each step
I’m talking to the girls who think like philosophers and speak like engineers, write like artists, and whose singing kisses our ears
I’m talking to the beautiful dark chocolate girls
Because you girls
You black girls
You dark skin black girls
Y’all are beautiful
You are smart
You can do anything
Eliyah Roberts, 17, attends Shady Side Academy. This took second place for high school poetry.
Carnegie Mellon University, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Writing Awards 2020
Spoken Word Poem
Pretty for a Darkskin?!
By Princess Latifah
In my December 2020 write-up on We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices, I wrote about how Eleanor Tate’s piece, “Dark-Brown Skin Is Beautiful,” made me think of two extraordinary Black actresses: Lupita Nyong’o, the author of Sulwe, who calls “colourism the daughter of racism” (see full article in my write-up), and who was featured in October 2019’s Vanity Fair; and Viola Davis, who was profiled in the July/ August 2020 issue of Vanity Fair. This was the first Vanity Fair cover by a Black photographer, Dario Calmese (see photo in my write-up). In this interview, Davis describes how the “paper bag test” is very much alive in Hollywood.
