A reality that I've learned to accept

The room

I went at colorism again and again on this first day. At one point I told the person behind the camera it was the stickiest part and we didn’t have enough takes of it. This is the one where I stopped explaining and said the plain thing first.

If I were a darker shade, I might not even be here. That’s a reality I’ve learned to accept, because as a lighter-skinned person I predominantly benefit from colorism — favouritism towards those with lighter skin tones. I didn’t say it for effect. I said it as arithmetic: the same room that reads me as someone who can get away with it reads a darker man as a threat, and the difference shows up in outcomes nobody wants to name.

In April I had said that colorism can be the difference between life and death, and I had said it about someone else. Here I said it about myself. The sentence is short because there isn’t more to say that would make it better.