What shade of black are you? Who told you first? What did it bring you? What did it take away from you?
Growing up some children were considered more intelligent because they were of a lighter shade. Darker children were more « thick in the head ». More troublesome too.
Lighter-skined children were prettier. And so it was natural to see them as pretty (that was the standard), and later on, attractive too. So even though my first loves were dark, somehow, all through my teens, I thought having a lighter skinned child was better than a darker one. I had to move to another country and work years with young children before I could destroy that malware in my psyche.
And there is more programming that remains to be undone when it comes to the subject of #blackniss and #shadeism .
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