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FILE PHOTO: Actress Zoe Saldana To Play Nina Simone In Biopic Role

Source: Gilles Petard / Getty

Since 2018 is all about rewriting old, worn out narratives that hinder society, now is the perfect time to address colorism in television in film.

You’ve seen it before: people of lighter complexions are usually cast as kind, attractive, sweet and good — while people with richer or darker skin get cast as the evil, sassy, undesirable one. Lighter skinned folks are even called “fair” sometimes — which can easily make a brown young girl feel she’s not “fair” enough.

Those weird family representations and mixups often happen in Hollywood. They’ll cast a racially ambiguous kid to fully Black parent. Or remember when they replaced dark skin Aunt Viv with light skin Aunt Viv?

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bfb4DN_F3sk/?tagged=auntviv

And we know Little Richie couldn’t be related to the rest of the Winslows’.

https://twitter.com/Tahoe17/status/53205191499059200

When folks who benefit from the light skin privilege of being a Black America speak out, (like Amandla Stenberg on turning down the role of Shuri in Black Panther), it actually feels like we’re making progress. But we still have a ways to go.

Hit the flip for more times we realized that colorism was a real thing in Hollywood.

Complexion Obsession: 9 Times We Realized Colorism Was A Real Thing In Hollywood  was originally published on globalgrind.com

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