Colorism Quotes

“Dark is beautiful, brother.”
― Merlin Franco, Saint Richard Parker

“When a white man goes to the pub, he is a socializer; a Brown man in a bar is a drunkard. A white arrogant man is an alpha male; headstrong Indians are pricks. A white man sleeping around is a lover; an Indian on multiple dates is a womanizer. White men make love, we Brown Indians f*ck”
― Merlin Franco, Saint Richard Parker

“. . . There are many type of humans. Look here.” She steeples her hands and puts her chin on top of it. “On top is white man. White man culture, very good.” She slides her chin down to her wrist. “Second comes Yellow man culture. Yellow also good.” She lifts her head and serves me a pitiful glance. “Sorry to tell you, Kumar. Other species comes only below.”
― Merlin Franco, Saint Richard Parker

“Listen to your kuya, sister. Got three type kilikili.” He raises his finger. “One, that kano armpit smell like butter, burger, dollar; two, that Chinese intsik one smell like noodles, siopao, yuan; three, that bumbay one bad smell like roti, curry, rupee. Next time, find a kano who smells like butter, burger, or dollar. Curry not good. Rupee also not good, ba.”
― Merlin Franco, Saint Richard Parker

“Dark skin is not
a crime.
Light skin is not
a prize.”
― Anan$i

“by virtue of living
in a racist world
nonblack people are
raised to be antiblack
we are all taught that
lighter is better

- undoing”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“Here they learn the rest of the lesson begun in those soft houses with porch swings and pots of bleeding heart: how to behave. The careful development of thrift, patience, high morals, and good manners. In short, how to get rid of the funkiness. The dreadful funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature, the funkiness of the wide range of human emotions.

Wherever it erupts, this Funk, they wipe it away; where it crusts, they dissolve it; wherever it drips, flowers, or clings, they find it and fight it until it dies. They fight this battle all the way to the grave. The laugh that is a little too loud; the enunciation a little too round; the gesture a little too generous. They hold their behind in for fear of a sway too free; when they wear lipstick, they never cover the entire mouth for fear of lips too thick, and they worry, worry, worry, about the edges of their hair.”
― Toni Morrison

“It began to darken. Not the darkness that was already within the yateveo but an enveloping darkness, even blacker than the night but without depth or time. this was it. And as far as reporting what death was like, I can use only one word: colorless. But oddly, that wasn't quite it. After what could have been anything between a couple of seconds and a century, I saw a dim sliver of light open up in front of me, and I believed, for a moment, that I was about to be reborn.”
― Jasper Fforde, Shades of Grey

“People may "other" me for the color of my skin and the shape of my eyes. This is their weakness. It is not mine.”
― The Thoughtful Beast

“I do not fear the sun darkening my skin. I fear colonialism damaging my self-worth with bleach.”
― The Thoughtful Beast

“The highest degree of beauty is found on dark skin; that of ugliness, on light skin.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Anybody who thinks that shadeism does not exist is not being honest.”
― Sharon Hurley Hall

“There is a lot of pressure on women to conform to a certain image - shadeism itself is another manifestation of that.”
― Sharon Hurley Hall, Exploring Shadeism

“People in the older generation who make comments about "nice skin" and "nice hair" are talking about the straightness of your hair and the blackness of your skin.”
― Sharon Hurley Hall, Exploring Shadeism

“White women may tan at the beach or apply darkening lotions for a “healthy glow,” but whether any of them would trade their white skin for good is another matter altogether. Comedian Chris Rock, African American, said it best in his 1999 standup routine: “There ain’t a white man in this room that would change places with me. None of you. None of you would change places with me, and I’m rich!” Perhaps this is because light skin along with racial whiteness in the United States is associated with intelligence, wealth, national belonging, and citizenship, and impacts access to opportunities. Despite the tanning culture, Sriya Shrestha argues that “white people want to be white.”
― Nikki Khanna, Whiter: Asian American Women on Skin Color and Colorism

“In this schema, as in today's, your lot in life is determined by the circumstances of your birth, by the color of your skin. So the current use of 'mestizo' isn't so far off from the original...To dismiss the world's current popular usage is to deny the racism, classism, and colorism in this country's past, as well as their continued prevalence today.”
― Matt Ortile, The Groom Will Keep His Name: And Other Vows I've Made About Race, Resistance, and Romance

“To counter that 'all lives matter' is to dismiss the specificity of antiblack racism, how the gradations of violence inflicted on nonwhite bodies is dependent on the darkness or lightness of our skin.”
― Matt Ortile, The Groom Will Keep His Name: And Other Vows I've Made About Race, Resistance, and Romance

“Passing like this, was funny, heroic even. Who didn’t want to get over on white folks for a change? But the passe blanc where a mystery. You could never meet one who’d passed over undetected; the same way you’d never know someone who successfully faked her own death. The act could only be successful if no one ever discovered it was a ruse.”
― Britt Bennett

“I am the perfect shade of brown. I wish not to lighten my skin, but lighten the burden of those who came before me that conformed to another hue.”
― The Thoughtful Beast

“... how everyone is made to believe white is good, pure, a ray of light while black is bad, tainted, the ugliest darkness, is ridiculous.”
― Julian Winters, Out Now: Queer We Go Again!

“Europe is a New modern era America's colony, European people are biggest victim of US policies because their leaders loyalty lies for US masters not for European people, for the last 20 years Europen people are paying cost for crises created by american policies, floud of millions refugees, Inflation, killing higher oil and gas prices, After all
Their tax money is not for their health sector or to manage unemployment. Rather, it is used for the supply of weapons, for war, which is not their war. European countries are just like an army base of an over-ambitious power which wants to control world order. They have been exploited by the politics of fear.”
― Mohammed Zaki Ansari, "Zaki's Gift Of Love"

“Before she was your momma, girl, she was my wife and I told her I didn't want your Blackity Black *ss! Nobody wants ya. I don't want ya! Your real momma didn't want ya! And from what I hear, ya husband don't want ya either!”
― Jacquie Abram, Hush Money: The Cost of Being Black In Corporate America

“Even today, we connect the color white with purity and the color black with evil. It would be considered odd if a person made a story called Snow Black and the Seven Dwarves. Well, snow is white, but she was named that because of her white skin, and she was considered to be the most beautiful woman in the land, so as you could see, white seems to be connected to beauty.”
― Lucy Carter, The Reformation

“Melanin Maniacs (The Sonnet)

White guy writes a couple of sonnets and plays,
And he is idolized as an olympian deity.
Colored guy smashes the paradigm to ashes,
And it warrants absolute unacceptability.
Apparently, greatness is only greatness,
If it can be credited to a caucasian.
Otherwise they only end up pondering,
What's the deal with this non-white person!
It's a sad, sad world we live in,
All the advancement is on the outside.
Inside we are dumber than Donald Duck,
Which has ruined all hope for real insight.
Enough of this obsession with white aphrodisiacs!
It's time to act as humans, and not melanin maniacs.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None

“They teach you that you are not black enough if you don’t hate the whites and you are not white enough if you don’t hate the blacks. What they don’t tell you is that hate will consume you too and make you a bad person. People who avenge, retaliate, reciprocate hate become worse than the person they choose to hate .”
― De philosopher DJ Kyos

“I am not Black, I am Cocoa.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“Ese día aprendimos que éramos mapuche para los ojos de los otros. Antes de ese día éramos solo niñas y niños. Desde ese momento, cuado digo Cafulqueo, me siento otra. Cada vez que pronuncio esa palabra-nombre, creo que conjuro algo y mi cuerpo no es mío.”
― Daniela Catrileo, Piñen

“You heard your mother cry

five years later,

as you begged her

to make your skin

just a little lighter

for you had learnt the language of self-hate.”
― Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada

“Two black friends have suggested to me that the relatively light skin tones of Syrian refugees explain why Canadians have opened their wallets and homes so generously.”
― Kamal Al-Solaylee, Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means

“Why not go and see what there was to this? Why not be the first Negro to try it out? Sure, it was taking a chance, but think of getting white in three days! No more jim crow. No more insults. As a white man he could go anywhere, be anything he wanted to be, do most anything he wanted to do, be a free man at last...”
― George S. Schuyler, Black No More