The QuA+lity

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Dark

Acan Innocent Immaculate

COMFORTABLE. IF, TEN years ago, someone had asked me to describe my skin tone, I would’ve

called it that. Comfortable. Just the right shade to allow me to fade into a dark -brown-hued

background while the lighter and darker tones stood out at opposite ends of the spectrum. Nothing

to write long romantic paragraphs about. Not golden, not bronze, not creamy. Just skin.

See, ten years ago, I’d have been too young for the shade of my brown to play an important

enough role in my society’s perception of my value. Now, however, I know I’m dark -skinned;

somewhere between the colours of chocolate and coffee, if I’m in the mood to be romantic. Now, I

know that because of the intensity of my melanin, I have been and will be discriminated against,

thought of as less.

It’s a little difficult to speak about colourism in Uganda without being brushed off as just

another bitter dark-skinned woman hungry for the privileges light-skinned women are accorded. We

have a history of downplaying or downright denying social issues like sexism, tribalism, and racism.

What’s another social issue but a nuisance that must be squashed and mocked into obscurity? It’s

not like colourism is costing people their lives or jobs, right? Wrong.

My first brush with colourism came when I was just eleven. My primary school was holding

elections for the students’ prefectorial council, and I’d decided to compete for the post of Council

President. We all knew that the voting was just a formality to keep up the farce of a democracy; the

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teachers always decided who made it onto the council and who didn’t. However, in cases where one

candidate had the overwhelming support of the student body, the teachers went with the students’

choice. It was a foregone conclusion that I would win. I’d been a prefect before and was well -liked

by the student body. My opponent, on the other hand, was a soft-spoken newbie who didn’t

understand the dynamics of the school. But when the time to select the President came, one of the

teachers took me aside and told me they had decided, against the students’ vote, that my opponent

would be the Student President while I would be the Speaker. The post of Speaker was a measly

consolation prize, another formality. I knew, without having to ask, why my opponent had been

selected. She was light-skinned, in that luminous way that caught the eye and refused to let go. She

was pretty. She would represent the school more favourably. It didn’t matter that I was smart, that I

had experience with public speech and leadership where she had none. The impression that made on

my young mind was that my dark skin would never be good enough for first place.

I grew up, and society’s predilection for light skin became more blatant. I wanted to think

that it wasn’t important. The boys thought the lighter girls were prettier—big deal. Right? Right. Life

wouldn’t let me think it wasn’t important. I was dark for the central region, and light for the

northern region. Whenever I travelled up north, my relatives would comment on the tone of my

skin, compliment it. If I came home from school with a tan, my family would ask me why I’d

become darker, and I’d spend the entire holiday holed up inside the house, hiding from the

darkening rays of the sun so my melanin could back down a little. And when I returned to school,

my friends would smile at me and tell me I was lighter, and the teachers and matrons would punish

any transgression a little more kindly until the sun did its thing again, and then I was another of

those wicked little black children who’d get beaten more ferociously than their light -skinned

counterparts.

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Unconsciously, I began to do things that would ensure I stayed an acceptable shade of

brown. Don’t stay out in the sun too long. Always wear a hat and long-sleeved tops, even on the

most blistering days of the dry season. Buy sunscreen. None of it was ever enough though. One day,

a few days after I’d joined high school, I was walking to class when an older girl standing with her

friends commented, “Oh my God, that girl is so black.”

It hurt; that accurate description. Looking back, I can tell you now that I know my reaction

was foolish, that I am a black girl, and I take pride in my blackness. But then, it was an insult. It was

said the way one would talk about a dirty room or an ugly dress. Eight words made me painfully

aware of what years of conditioning had forced me to accept as truth. Black was bad; white was

right. It was everywhere. The Bible called Satan the prince of darkness, and the depictions of God

and the angels on the ceilings of the cathedrals were blindingly, dazzlingly white. White was the

colour for celebrations, for weddings, for baptisms. Black was the colour for sombre events, for

funerals and sadness. And here I was, wearing a permanent skin that was black. I tried even harder

after that to avoid the darkening kiss of the sun. I’d liked sports when I was in primary school but I

couldn’t participate here because I didn’t want to get any darker. Two years later, I bought my first

tube of Fair & Lovely. I told myself that all I needed it for was to make my face shine a little less.

According to the Eurocentric ads on TV, having a pale face was fashionable, even if it made my

dark skin look like I’d dived face first into a heap of ash. I didn’t want to be that bright light, just

brown enough to get by. But I’d seen the Fair & Lovely commercials: the transition from

unattractive darkness to coveted lightness was so convincing. I wanted to be that more confident girl

who got the job.

Pale face didn’t suit me well, thank goodness. I tossed that unfinished tube of Fair & Lovely

away and resigned myself to my darkness. It didn’t hurt that I was in a single -sex school either. Boys

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were a rare occurrence, and the girls were too busy with life to actively remind me that my skin was a

disability. Sure, there were a few cases like that one male teacher who gave the light-skinned girls

preferential treatment and higher marks, but it was hard to take that personally. I was simply a

carefree girl with no thoughts of her complexion. I played sports with no inhibitions and walked in

the sun with my arms exposed. For the most part, high school was bliss. That sanctuary didn’t last

forever though.

University was like a new planet to someone who’d been in a single -sex school throughout

her adolescence. Lightness was still the highest standard, but now, it spilled over into the world, into

places I’d never been. At the marketplace, women with faces the colour of sand sold me wares with

hands that looked like deep fried plantain—yellow in some places, black in others. Most of the

adverts on TV featured light-skinned women, and all the female TV presenters were that precious

high yellow. They’re easier to shoot onscreen, someone tried to tell me, but they had nothing to say

when I pointed out that the male presenters came in all the shades of brown there were. Downtown,

billboards advertising the best bleaching creams straddled entire streets shamelessly. Friends who’d

been a warm deep brown a year before emerged from the cocoon of vacation with new nearly

translucent white skins. Reputable clinics covertly sold magic pills that could make you light from

the inside. A dark-skinned woman became Miss Uganda and had her beauty and eligibility for the

crown questioned in every corner of the country because everyone seemed to think she should’ve

been a little lighter-skinned. Wearing makeup that made you a few shades lighter was perfectly

acceptable.

Once again, I found myself in that middle ground on the skin tone spectrum where my

shade of brown was nondescript. Comfortable. I’d had six months on holiday to cultiv ate that

perfectly unobtrusive shade of brown, staying in the house all day and wearing my long-sleeved tops.

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I was alright for the first two semesters of university. Then the sun did its thing, and I was black

again. I didn’t notice it until a bodaboda cyclist called me Black Beauty.

I was transported back to that year in high school when the older girl had called me black. It

stung, once again, but in a good way. Like the bite of a raw mango eaten without salt. Good, but it

brings tears to your eyes. Black Beauty. For all its good intentions, the phrase sounded like a

backhanded compliment. It felt like it was fuelled by surprise. Hey, you’re black, but you’re beautiful.

You’re a rarity, because darkness and beauty are usually mutually exclusive. Well done!

I was back in that place. That place where I realized that my lighter-skinned girlfriends had

life a little easier than I did. That place where I decided that I would marry a white or light -skinned

man simply because I hoped my children would have it easier than I do. It was so common, this line

of thought, that it didn’t strike me as strange at that time. Women everywhere were doing it. I knew

someone whose entire family was dedicated to ‘diluting’ their blackness by only marrying outside

their race. We sat together and fawned over pictures of mixed race babies and hoped that our own

would look just like that: curly-haired and light-skinned. With time, however, those thoughts became

ineffective shields against my feelings of inadequacy.

My first defensive reaction was the development of a superiority complex. My skin was

magic; it didn’t burn under the glare of the sun. I didn’t need much makeup to cover my flaws.

Science said my dark skin was an evolution to combat the ferocity of the sun, so I had to be

superhuman, just a little bit. I looked down on the women who bleached their skin, wondered how

low their esteem could be that they would damage themselves that way. All truths but, coming from

a place so fraught with feelings of inferiority, ultimately empty.

Finally, I turned to the Internet for consolation. It was the age of black girl magic. The

Internet was celebrating black girls in all their shades. I looked for pictures of girls who looked like

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me with a feverish sort of desperation, breathing a sigh of relief when I found one where all the

comments were saying she was beautiful, feeling a piece of my self-esteem return to me. And when

society would remind me that lightness was still the highest standard, I would run back to the

internet for a refill of that self-love. It didn’t matter that there seemed to be limitations on what kind

of dark-skinned magic was palatable for the public. It didn’t matter that most of the women

celebrated had to have a certain body shape, or skin as blemish-free as a baby’s. We were being

celebrated for once, and I would take those baby steps with everyone, even if the chameleon’s pace

frustrated me.

Like all things, though, the internet had its bad side. For every post praising the darkness of

a black woman, there were five more disparaging it. Dark skin versus light skin comparisons were

the norm on Twitter. Dark-skinned women were manly, lower class, deserving the bare minimum of

respect. Light-skinned women were delicate trophies, Crème de la crème of blackness. All the

picture filters strived to make the subject lighter. I mastered the art of taking pictures in the best

lighting to make my skin appear as light as socially acceptable. The last thing I wanted was to

become the victim of trolls looking to attack my complexion. Any attempts to bring to light the

unfairness of judgements based on complexion were quickly rubbished by men on whom such

issues have little impact anyway, because the social success of a man isn’t tied to his attractiveness as

intricately as a woman’s is.

I looked for answers everywhere I could. This hatred for dark skin seemed to be spread far

and wide. There was no sanctuary for darkness, not even in its own home. The internet threw ever-

rising statistics of the usage of bleaching products in ma ny countries at me. Maybe colourism was

one of the effects of a global white supremacist system. Maybe light skin looked more appealing

because the eye is ostensibly drawn to bright things. Maybe all those scientific "facts" placing

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whiteness and lightness at the pinnacle of beauty were right. Maybe they were wrong. It took me a

long time to understand, accept, and love my complexion.

I’m still a work in progress. I’ll probably be till the day I die. Some days, I look in the mirror

and see someone who isn’t good enough because her skin is too dark. Some days, I want to rip off

my clothes and run around town celebrating the gorgeousness of my skin. Some days, I feel pretty.

Some days, I think if I were lighter-skinned, I’d be prettier. I’m still afraid of getting too dark for

society. Even now, with all I know, with all this love for myself I have swelling in my chest, I still

watch my arms and face and scowl at the mirror in displeasure at the appearance of a tan. But I

know that one day, I’ll be strong enough to be comfortable with whatever shade of brown I will be.

I’m a work in progress.

I know I’ve had it easier than millions of dark -skinned girls who didn’t have the luxury of

being comfortably brown. I know I’ve had it easier than other comfortably brow n girls who aren’t

considered ‘pretty' or funny or intelligent, or whatever perks a woman should apparently bring to the

table. I know the hardest of my days are ahead of me. I know equality for humans of all shades is

hundreds of years beyond our grasp. I know that, for many people, colourism may seem like a trivial

issue, especially in a place like Uganda where, despite the fluctuations of the richness of our melanin,

we are all brown. I know that it hasn’t invaded our society to the extent it has in plac es like India or

the United States. But that doesn’t make it any less dangerous as a cancer. It will spread if those of

us who have the means don’t speak up about it, and make an ailing society even sicker.

The most I can hope for now is the courage to lov e myself as best as I can. One day, I’ll

have children of my own, and I hope that by then, I will be wise enough to teach them that each

shade of brown holds as much merit as the next.

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