Colours, mmmmmm, the smile it brings to your face when you see them blended but apparently
into slavery. These lustful whites took the pride left in these women slaves, had their ways With
man cannot learn from that. Let us go back into history when Africans were colonised and captured
them and got some pregnant. These innocent kids who were born into this beautiful yet ugly world
were used as tools. They were easily identified by their complexion and treated differently, better
than kids born of both African parents. Hence the appreciation of “light skin”. Till date this has been
a mind-set the lighter your skin the better you look or as others will say the more beautiful you are.
This has cultivated the act of bleaching in a lot of people, killing them slowly. You find in a family that
the light skin child is treated better than the darker one and as parents and family friends do you stop
to even think of what effects it is having on the darker child. Are you causing a negative effect on her
self-esteem? are you helping her live to her full potential?, is she happy being treated the way she is?. As
black parents do we ever tell our kids they have the most beautiful complexion and are beautiful
irrespective. Do we ask them how they are treated in school and how they treat others as well? For
all you know they are being bullied because of their skin colour, something they had no hand in
choosing. To every black, caramel, melanin, dark, chocolate skin girl out there, however you identify
yourself; YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL, NEVER DOUBT THAT.
Phyllis Boadiwaa
Tema, Ghana
June 16, 2020