Hi Obinna, and thank you. Absolutely, I’ve had a far different and more privileged experience than my dark-skinned cousins and friends, and I have written about that in other essays on Medium. For me, though, it’s all the more reason to speak up.

I am Black; not mixed race, not any people of other races in my family. I look the way I look because white men raped enslaved Black women for generations; I am physical evidence of our oppression. I grew up in the 1960’s when segregation was enforced by law, and so my age also plays a role in how I’ve experienced racism.

Colorism and light-skinned privilege is a topic that often gets lost in the overall discussion of racism and feminism, but it is a critical piece of white supremacy, and we do need to put it on the table and turn on the lights.