It will always be amusing to me that people of pallor will confuse Black people, people of color, Global Majority folx for one another like we "all look alike." That weird and racist "hot take" is one that the un-melanated masses fall back on when they mistake me for the other Black guy in my office who looks nothing like me. I've been mistaken for Black and Brown folx, who look nothing like me. They don't even look like a Great Value version of me, yet those who cannot tan will be like, "I'm sorry. I thought you were Craig." Real talk?
If any ethnocultural or racial group strives for homogeneity, it is those who keep the sunscreen and UV protection industries afloat.
Whiteness has impacted beauty and appearance standards all over the world. While there are white people who want to be my color so badly that they lay under heat lamps like fast-food chickens until they look like Rotisserie Gold, they are not the majority. The wildest aspect of the colorism and "beauty standards" that the un-melanated perpetuate is this homogenous template of aesthetics that whiteness has deemed socially acceptable, palatable, and appealing. I have worked at places where so many of the people of pallor look and dress the same way and adhere to the same societal appearance standards that I'm scared to say someone's name unless I'm looking them in the face and able to differentiate the additional features of Karen from Sharon. And that has nothing to do with skin tone and everything to do with the way the un-melanated masses embrace homogeneity as faux individuality steeped in a model of patriarchal white supremacist capitalist beauty standards. Melanated folx have proven that we subvert white beauty standards and white homogenous fashions and make magic from them while y'all all look like the same ten archetypes. It's like a bad RPG out here sometimes.
Engrained white supremacist ideologies dictate what you view as acceptable and beautiful, people of pallor. It also dictates how you consciously and unconsciously stereotype and label non-white ethnocultural heritages and communities. Why? Unconsciously you want us to feel as homogenous as y'all do. You've been bred to accept conformity masquerading as socially palatable "individuality" and "superior" genetics. Melanated folx are a spectrum of colors and tones that do not fit into the box y'all need it to fit into to feel superior in all aspects of appearance and beauty. The sooner y'all reconcile the things you need to unlearn about race and appearance and how you look at the world outside of white supremacy, the sooner you'll be able to look outside of the homogenous and be yourself, appropriation-free.
I look nothing like Craig.
But most of y'all all look like interchangeable contestants on this season of The Bachelor.
Great Value much?
[Image description: a collage of 13 contestants from a 2014 season of The Bachelor. They are all white and blond. They are almost indistinguishable from each other.]
