“Dark Girls” exhibit at Portfolio Gallery spurs discussion on skin tone

African-Americans invited to take part in survey about skin color for new book

"Dark Beauties" photos by Robert Hale

The opening of “Dark Girls,” an exhibit at Portfolio Gallery and Education Center, sparked a fascinating conversation about skin color. This is a topic that may be the furthest from people’s minds and could be considered an irrelevant topic in 2012.

But one thing became clear:   Skin color still is relevant in defining attitudes regarding race.

The exhibit at Portfolio focuses on the "Dark Girls" within our world community and seeks to show the beauty that is often over looked by mainstream publications. The exhibit, which features photos, paintings and sketches by African-American artists, coincides with the movie documentary, “Dark Girls” by Bill Duke and D. Channsin Berry, which explores the deep-seated biases and attitudes about skin color particularly dark skinned women outside of and within the Black American culture.

Washington University
law professor,
Kim Norword

The “gallery talk,” an informal but engaging dialogue about the exhibit attended by about 40 people (all black) on May 12, was led by Kimberly Norwood, a Washington University law school professor, who is working on a book, titled “Color Matters:  Skin Tone Bias and the Myth of a Post-Racial America.”  The book will explore the origins of the color struck phenomenon in the black community and will look at the role of colorism today, in the twenty first century, in a society claiming to be post-racial.  

Some of the points breached during the session, included:

·       Darker skinned black women are more ostracized in society at large and within the black community than fairer skinned black women
·       The media, movies, entertainment, and advertisers continue to prefer lighter skin blacks over darker skinned blacks.
·       Black male athletes/entertainers, whether themselves light skinned or dark skinned, more often have lighter skinned/or non-black spouses and girlfriends.
·       An overwhelming majority of black leaders in the United States (governors, mayors, congressional leaders, leaders of the NAACP, the Urban League, black fraternities, black sororities and even university professors, particularly at ivy league institutions) have historically been (and continue to be) able to pass the "paper bag" test.
·       That black youth are conditioned socially that they have to look a certain way – and this includes preferences for lighter skin and "good hair."

Studies replicated in Harlem in 2005 with black children (A Girl Like Me) and in 2010 with both black and white children (Anderson Cooper 360), show that the results of the “doll experiment” conducted in the early 1950s and used in the Brown v. Board of Education case still hold true today.  Specifically, the experiments confirmed that generally, black and white children, as young as 4 and 5, assign negative associations to dark skinned images and positive associations to light and white skin images.  In question after question, the children in both studies demonstrated a clear preference for white and light playmates over dark or darker skinned playmates and labeled darker children as bad, dumb, and dirty. 

To highlight the relevance of this topic, Norwood shared with the audience the recent news story of the Japanese automobile maker, Acura’s type casting call for a black male “but not too dark”.  “This is happening, now,” Norwood said. “We have a 2012 example.  We’re not making this stuff up.  This still happens and something we have to deal with.”

Norwood said it is one thing that society makes an issue of skin tone; it’s is quite another that African-Americans continue to struggle with this issue as well.  “This is an issue we as a community and as a society have to get over” she said. “The only way to do that is to keep this issue on the front burner of our minds and work through it.  One thing we know for sure:  this issue simply is not going away on its own.  This is going to require work, hard work, and deep soul searching, in order to get at the root of what is going on.”

Norwood and her co-authors are conducting a national survey on black attitudes about skin color (a similar survey will be launched in the coming weeks to reach attitudes of non-blacks on skin tone issues as well).  You are encouraged to participate in the data gathering. To take part in the survey on black attitudes (the survey is completely anonymous), click survey or past this link into your browser: https://slu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_9Ak8krzctlxXtzK