Ain’t That About A B*tch, Tory Lanez Says Colourism is Still A “Thing” In Hip Hop
As a black girl you’ve most definitely heard the ideology surrounding the term “colorism”. Whether you’ve got melanated pigments richer than Milo cocoa powder or find yourself on the other end of the spectrum of golden goodness, like Ovaltine – the light malted version, you’ve experienced some type of bias in regard to the colour of your skin.
I wish it were all as easy as choosing which delightful hot beverage to indulge in, but the truth is we are all just skin tones pinned against one another at the expense of someone’s arbitrary taste buds.
Colourism is discrimination or prejudice based on the colour of one’s skin. I know, I know – unbelievable right? Folks actually treat other’s differently depending on the degree of melanin they possess and had no choice in as a result of inheritance. More often than not, women on the darker end get the short end of the stick and experience inconceivable levels of distain and disgust.
Now, colourism or “shadeism” is not unique to the black people alone, but this backwards notion is shared amongst minority cultures worldwide, affecting countries of north and south Asia alike. And well, even in 2019, our beloved and flawed hip-hop community is not absolved of colour-bias, even if rappers chose to publicly stage their allyship to dark women.
“Tory my N****, I hate it had to be him…”
We love a man of his word, and well… Tory Lanez, figured he’d have to do more than just say it. In a recent Internet debacle Lanez took to his Instagram to address an “on-going problem in our community that needs to stop”, that took place at Nafe Smallz’s video shoot for “Good Love”.
Lanez is the featured artist on the track and posted a video where he is seen telling a darker skinned video model to return back to her original placement in the scene, while and suggesting that a lighter skinned model take the back burner.
“[…]WHAT I’M NOT GOING TO DO IS ALLOW ANY OF THESE DIRECTORS TO DE-VALUE OUR BLACK WOMEN”
Concerned citizens of the world-wide-web (i.e The Shaderoom commentators and black twitter) were floored by this gesture, but yet and still his praise came to an end all too soon. It turns out, the entire ordeal was a hoax.
Sultry Shen, the dark skinned video model, claims Lanez had very little intention of making it a point to have her shown as the receipts are all shown in the absence of that particular scene in the music video. The “Good Love” director-duo, Capone x Guise insist that they would never allow the blatant disregard of dark skinned women as the picture they believe Tory is painting.
Of course, Tory claims he wouldn’t go so low as to stage such a video and believes the internet has a “funny way of tryna take the light off of truthful s***”.
“The good news is n**** you came a long way…the bad news is n**** you went the wrong way…” – J[ermaine].Cole
The good news is that for anyone that believes colourism is not a real thing or that dark skin women are butt hurt that some boy in grade school voiced his “preference” and it just so happened to not be them but rather a racially ambiguous lighter skinned 3b curly-haired-woman, you can deep it and kindly keep your mouths shut - forever.
The bad news is, that the rest of us who aren’t in denial or choosing to ignore the facts, can acknowledge that colourism is an issue but are making slow strides to change the narrative or rarely make efforts to change it at all. What is even bad-der is that when prominent figures and culture contributors do speak out against this type of baboonery, they allegedly go out of their way to create fake stories for personal gain.
True allyship is public sacrifice and on going acts of service in support of marginalised groups, without the underlining chase for clout.
Hip hop is a male dominated sport and although black women are an essential part of the culture, the black men in positions of power have got to push this conversation forward – which at the very least is what Tory Lanez did accomplish – kinda.
And to my fellow “light skinned girls and…Kelly Rowlands”, keep-on-keeping on and fighting that good fight, against people pinning us against one another and against our former selves that were subconsciously taught this internal prejudice and hatred towards the pigments of one another.
Besides, what would we look like feeding into what people with tasteless tongues tell us about our different rich flavours. Milo and white Ovaltine are equally satisfying – as if a black woman’s likeness could be reduced to that of a hot beverage anyway.
