On Random Thoughts: how colorism compounded a society both by region and history
This piece doesn't mean anything except I have to write it down.
What happens when much of your skin color affects so much of perception to the point it affords you privilege compared if you're tanned? If the Asian region even way back the Western colonization and that dumb ass racist White Man's Burden manifesto shit took place to plague the modern society later, the fair skin is always a social currency.
Especially when it had ties to social hierarchies, associated with less manual labor. Take for example Indonesia and certain parts of Visayas and Mindanao with the concept of 'binukot', a chosen daughter of an established family will signal to their society that they can afford not to put her outside. Literally. The 'binukot' doesn't go out her house unless she will be married. It reminds me of that anecdote I've read when it comes to Indonesian literature 'Letters of a Javanese Princess', where the narrator, Raden Adjeng Kartini, is the princess herself who wrote how she stares at her wall throughout her life, with different maidens to assist her.
It's a social currency leveraged on women, where a woman's value will always be appraised based on her physical appearance. If men are visual species by nature, then I won't wonder any further if the pervasiveness of this ingrained value system stems from patriarchal values.
"Fuck the patriarchy key chain to the ground," - All Too Well, Taylor Swift.
But if such is the case of the pre-colonial society, then colonial society amalgamated this system further.
Well, it's such a pity that so much emphasis is given to skin tone that a whitening soap market is highest in this society. Where the want for constant association to the white race both for skin tone, money and social mobility parallels a history of colonial depression. I'm depressed myself to think about it. It saddened a part of me where a young sweet girl will soon suffer an intense insecurity about her natural skin tone just because her society couldn't secure a history where a brown color was normal.
Rather, what society will pass down and constantly reminds her is the subjugation that her own ancestors suffered from white racist hands. Colonial, imperial, pre-colonial and socio-economic. For her to soon understand that a skin tone can make a difference when carving a path which opens a social mobility. Pageantry, money and patronage from those hedonistic gambling companies.
Yes, I'm looking at you, you fuckin' living devil of Luzon. Dead black eyes. How the hell you're not yet put to jail with how many people you killed?
Well...
It's not like this is going any further anyway. Especially if neighbors persist likewise, sharing similarities of pre-colonial value of the fairer skin, paler skin that screams like anemia. But I hope that this young brown girl will realize her worth, where I don't have to look further by how much whitening cream she wants to apply on her face, by how much she wants to afford a glutathione drip.
Only, perhaps, when society actually shifts. Hopefully being a morena is the standard, just for this moment, a chance that maybe contemporary sensibilities and attitude could somehow shift.
