How Colorism Affected the Life of Bob Marley

In August 2003, Dwight Burch - a dark-skinned, African-American waiter at an Applebee’s restaurant in Jonesboro, Ga. filed a lawsuit against Applebee’s and his light-skinned African American supervisor. In the suit, Burch alleged that during his three months at the restaurant the manager repeatedly referred to him as “tar baby” and “black monkey”. Burch also alleged that the manager told him to bleach his skin and that he was fired when he threatened to report the man to Applebee’s head quarters. Burch was subsequently awarded $40,000 to settle the suit. (Reported by Alex P. Kellogg, BET.com Staff Writer). In the case above, Burch experienced what several black scholars refer to as colorism. Colorism is discrimination within the black community based on skin tone (B. Maxwell). It is the belief that a person’s “goodness” is inversely related to the darkness (sometimes the lightness) of his/her skin. My family comes in all shades: My father dark coffee, my mother mocha, my brother milk cocoa and I’m simply cocoa. Because we lived overseas, my experience with colorism is relatively limited. Yet I do recall family gatherings in the US where a few of my relatives would marvel over my brother and pay little attention to me. Until recently, I thought it was because he was the younger one. My mother was highly in-tune with color issues in black society. She made sure that my brother and I knew that we were equally handsome, talented and bright and that we should be there for each other. When I was about 8 years old, I remember walking into a restaurant with my mother and brother. A black waitress walked over to us and told my mother “wow, isn’t he a cute one”, pointing to my brother. My mother quickly snapped, “Don’t you mean, isn’t he a light one?” and walked us out of the restaurant, assuring us that we were equally cute. Colorism is neither new, nor exclusive to one part of the world. It affects almost every black person directly and indirectly. My paper looks