Dr. Yaba Blay on Skin Color's Meaning and Bringing the Dialogue to CNN

Welcome to Parlour’s newest smart brown girl series, profiling women of color in academia. Delving into their research, we’ll discuss what’s going on in the hearts and minds of those at the forefront of intellectual discussion in America and around the world. Who said feminism, intellectualism and learning was dead?In this world of color politics, Dr. Yaba Blay makes sure her students ask questions like, 'Why are most black news anchors caramel colored?' And the answer is not be as simple as one might assume. Blay, an assistant teaching professor of Africana Studies at Drexel University, is also the artistic director and producer of the (1)ne Drop Project, an online exhibition around the politics of skin color among blacks, and consulting producer for CNN's Black in America 5. In the latest installment of reporter Soledad O'Brien's investigation of race in America, teens and adults openly discussed how their complexion shaped their life experiences. Conversations like these are the core of Blay's intellectual work on colorism, the idea that different complexions carry varying cache through the lens of white supremacy. Parlour spoke with the New Orleans native about her research focus, what she's learned about blackness while creating the (1)ne Drop Project and how her Ghanaian roots played into her own views of skin color in the stratified South. Parlour: Why did you begin the (1)ne Drop Project on colorism?Dr. Yaba Blay: I started the (1)ne Drop Project in 2011 when I applied for a small grant to self publish a few hundred coffee table books. When I realized how much money I'd need, I launched a Kickstarter project to raise funds and that became the marketing platform as people kept spreading the (1)ne Drop Project video and page. We reached our goal and introduced new people to the project, including a producer at CNN's Black in America.Then the Black in America producer contacted me to do a feature on their blog, In America, and since I was already scheduled to travel to Atlanta to photograph some (1)ne Drop participants, CNN, which is based in Atlanta, followed my camera crew and I when we arrived. Then CNN anchor Don Lemon happened to call and ask 'Can Dr. Blay be on my show?' I dashed to the studio and appeared on CNN Newsroom in early January. Then Don, who's also from New Orleans like me, said my project really spoke to him and he hooked me up with Soledad O'Brien, the head of Black in America. A few months later, Soledad reached out and said, 'I’m really thinking of doing something related to your project for Black in America so let's talk.'Why is colorism so important to you and how did growing up in New Orleans shape your view of your own complexion?My family’s from Ghana, my dad came from Ghana to Madison, Wisconsin for his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin and then his first job was in New Orleans and so I was born there. In my household my skin color is normal, I look like lots of Ghanaian people so it wasn’t ever a conversation. But when I walked out of the house, I became painfully aware that I was very dark skinned. Colorism is relative, what people think is light skin in Philadelphia is not the same as in New Orleans.I was made aware of my skin often, even as a child. I remember being really close, or so I thought, to a little girl. We all went to Catholic school and I lived close to her. I'd talk to her at school and on the phone but I never went to her house. When her birthday party was coming up, I didn't get invited and when I asked her why, somehow it came up in the conversation with that little girl's mom said I was too dark.What was difficult about that experience was that my parents are immigrants, so to go home and tell them about something like that, their reaction would just be, 'Oh, wow those people are crazy.' That's as far as it would go, so that tortured me in a way. But at the same time, my life was balanced because I felt extremely loved within my family and the West African community in New Orleans. I had African American friends in New Orleans with whom I felt very close with their families but it’s those painful experiences that stand out in my head. I've always been aware of colorism whether I had the language for it or not. In college I was introduced to the book The Color Complex and I said, 'Yup,this is what I want to research and talk about.' Still, reading The Color Complex I felt there was more we needed to know about how this social construct came to be and I became interested in figuring it out.On Facebook, you posted a video of Toni Morrison talking about racism and how it wasn’t specifically her problem. She said it's actually a problem that the larger society has and if they deal with it, then we could all move forward. Do you feel like that idea plays into colorism as well?I agree with her on white folks checking themselves, but that’s why, during my work with CNN, I probably got on people’s nerves. I kept saying to the producers, 'Yo, if you want to do this because you think you're opening this issue to a mainstream audience as an exploration, other people have done that. The problem has been they’ve done it from a National Geographic-let’s-look-at-the-natives perspective and viewers walk away feeling like black people are pathological. You have to conceptualize colorism within racism and talk about why we are still invested in it.' This concept is not black people's, it is an outpost of racism that’s connected to white supremacy.I also want to see the conversation move to include white folks discussing colorism because they are participating in this, whether they're conscious or not. There’s a reason why you turn on major media outlets and many of the anchors are a certain color. Don Lemon told me, 'I’m the darkest one here,' which makes me ask, which black people are ya’ll comfortable with?You've also mentioned Kendrick Lamar’s Poetic Justice video because he specifically requested a brown model to play his love interest. How did that make you feel?I'm happy that Kendrick made the choice and that he was vocal about it. He let people know that it had to be a choice because his request was not a natural thought for folks. It’s interesting because when I posted that same video on my professional Facebook page, a couple of brown skin sisters wrote, 'Oh so we’re supposed to be happy now?' I’m not looking at a Kendrick Lamar video and feeling vindicated, I’m just saying it’s kind of huge for someone so young to make that decision.You've said that when you included light skin subjects in your research, your browner subjects felt offended? I was selling out because the standard way that we look at colorism is through the eyes of dark skinned people. We’re talking about what being this color means in society but that silences light skinned folks in our community. The presumption is that light skinned people are privileged. Growing up in New Orleans, I also believed that but in doing this project and talking to the large variety of folks from all over the world, I've been humbled.Most of the light skinned women in the project talk about the tenuous relationship they have with brown skinned sisters. They'd say, 'You don’t know me but it’s tension, especially in 'conscious' circles. Like there’s no way I could be down for the cause because I’m so light or my hair is a particular texture. If I open my mouth, no matter what I say, it’s negated. And if the darker skinned sisters say the same thing, you listen to her.' I had a sister look at me and say we get caught up in the historical motif of the “house nigger” versus the “field nigger," assuming the house nigger was sipping wine. Has anybody asked what the house nigger had to do? Field workers got off for a few hours each night, but who do you think is jumping up when Ms. Master has to go to the bathroom in the middle night? Another sister told me, 'You think I have privilege because you watch all these dudes holla at me? If I could give that to you, you could have it because I don’t want that.'As a woman of color, how do you suggest combatting the white ideal that’s projected onto black Americans and black people abroad?People often ask me what the solution is and I’m not a solution-oriented person when it comes to colorism. I never conceive colorism as something that can be resolved in total. My work is about asking different questions in the classroom, trying to get students to think more critically about the media that they’re consuming. In the media and gender class I teach, I try to get my students to a point where by the end of the semester, they can see without thinking about it, 'Yes, that woman is there because she’s a particular model that society is saying is beautiful.' How do we deal with that? You don’t want to walk around the world bitter, but I don’t ever tire of calling it out because it's not a thing of the past.How do you rectify colorism in a Pan-Africanism society or the Diaspora?There’s a difference between Pan-Africanism and Diaspora in theory and actually seeing it, a lot of us need to get out of our comfort zones. The first time I met a Panamanian sister, I was completely thrown off because she was my complexion and speaking Spanish fluently. I wasn't used to that in New Orleans, and I had to realize that colorism is not an American, or even a black, phenomenon. Colorism impacts people of color all over the world, and it's connected to the idea of global white supremacy. You have skin bleaching all over the world and people of mixed raced in the positions of power in their countries because people presume that their European ancestry makes them somehow better. That’s a direct connection to the colonial mentality where African people were thought to be barbaric and Europeans were human. That whole thing is still alive, though it may be remixed. For example, in Cuba people who look like me work in the kitchen or they’re picking up the trash, people who are lighter and look like Castro are in positions of power, it’s that clear cut. It’s annoying that this exists all over the world but being able to talk about it in a global context is helpful.Where can people view your (1)ne Drop Project?People can experience the (1)ne Drop, which I describe as a photo-essay book and online exhibit, at 1nedrop.com. The book will be published by the year's end, and readers will be able to read more personal narratives and see the photography as well.