a panel of three minute free judges passes the sentence unanimously as the headline says the stream now stay with us. they showed. easily. story. we bring you the stories. we live in. this time. and these are the three. different shades of. why people live. outside their own communities. and what. one of those. words she uses her large instagram. more than a quarter of a million people to break traditional western standards but before she found pride in her skin color she was chided for it insulted and even told to take a look. and even though. she knew. there. was actually bleach she. embraced. placing what she believes to be the true beauty of the. blacks. in our. wow that's relevant sounding superhot now before we get somebody let's explain colorism it's defined as prejudice or discrimination against individuals with adult skin tone often from people of the same ethnic or racial group light skin people are deemed more attractive more successful and small to people the term was mostly popularized by american author alice walker and in one nine hundred eighty two essay in search of our mothers gardens she wrote colorism in my definition prejudice you or preferential treatment of same race people based solely on their color joining us on our set to have this conversation we have now which in london noise stops is associate professor of journalism at temple university immaterial the social historian and broadcaster in the u.k. and the ron barton is a writer and author in san francisco california so i guess i'm really curious as to how you describe your skin to him how do i describe. as beautiful as dark you know what i am is who i am so you see your doc all right laurie how do you describe your own skin tone when you when you're making. i describe my skin tone. chocolate medium somewhere yeah basically chocolate with chocolate emma. her and her any immediate. yeah. yeah i did. i would describe my skin tone as being dark my dark chocolate i was cos niggers in high school. and i'm just black. and black people are so. much a fascinating range and you already have that you know you have that recovery already there right there yeah kim why do you think people differentiate even when they're brown all different shades of black between each other if you could explain what it was that was happening how to explain it absolutely check the question because like when i grew up in the thought you know where i was around so many different shade of black of light to as dark as me and there was never i was never a been put aside been look at differently because i'm dacogen all the people that i'm around so when i came to the u.s. and attended middle school and seen like little kid the african american kid that i'm ducking the knee and making fun of me that i'm too dark or we can see you. open you know smile so we can see you in all these comments toward me and i never no i never totally understand why they think they're better than me just because they too show a lot of them you know a line of them you know why they think that it's ok to make fun of me just because i'm. three or four and then you know so i never truly understand why the same people you know we both black if somebody asks you what color is you you're black if you ask me what color man black you know there's not different i can say i'm dark that's you know i could i just i'm black so i never truly understand what they mean why they would make fun of me or why they would you know be feeling that type neuron. you know i've experienced oh oh a lot of emanation with a market with a mon community especially coming to tease me they would say things like. when you saw black i bet that if i turned on a life i can see the only way that we can see you. is by your see i was. dark dark blacks. i was i was look. ugly when i was a child because i wasn't as as white as the quote unquote pretty kid. you know i mean just growing up a lot of the insults that he has with throat with each other when we were younger was always attacking the color. it would always be like. your mama she thought black and like you know for some reason like that for me just and see blackness was always around us i mean i you know it's ok while to really embrace who i am and to realize that my skin is beautiful and and clearly now there is more but i realize that even amongst us here on the set and on the show because we started the show there's laughter there but underneath it there is pain as we're hearing which is what this tweet here from robert west says there's coping utilized in public and in private private battles and where one realizes such a construct wreaks havoc on us all and so what that might look look like is a tweet from robert jordan who says there are cliques that can be created in school settings just by shades of skin color and the girls get it based on their looks so am i do you want to weigh in here to do this did you experience this in school cliques based on what you look like. i have a very different perspective because i grew up in arlen's. especially when i was growing up there was no black population so there was no such thing as being light skinned i was just black and it was very it was also like a very racist environment and that racism wasn't. kind of mitigated by the fact that i had a white parent and i was like it was almost as though people actually like white irish people couldn't make that couldn't distinguish in that way and they would see my mom people would meet my mom and they'd be like oh your mom's why you're you're adopted oh you're adopted that so it's not like no that you can't you see like people just kind of could do that and it was only when i went i have a lot of family in atlanta in the state and it was when i started going to spend the summers with them when i was sixteen that i for the first time my life encountered the kind of hierarchy that existed in terms of shade and how i was kind of positioned very high risk in that but i was very defined where let me get around let's break this down this case i use a different than to say i understand what you mean about the hierarchy of shades resit down for us a lot of it for people who are not away as how you can be not just black but different groups of different levels of black yes said this was new to me but when i when i was kind of catapulted into the realm in ireland it was like the equivalent of having like long hair and blue eyes which was like the beauty standard there and having skin my color was seen as making me the stereotypes are just by virtue of bout it. so i've got a. quote here from a loon he says i am proud to be a dark skin african all the way i live and role in lagos lagos nigeria west africa laurie but this origin of this hierarchy of blackness if you could put your finger on where does it come from what would you say. very easily comes from white supremacy i mean it really comes from a systemic belief that there is a superiority in skin in the white race i'm not just pale skin but a european european race and you know this adaption of a belief system that the later your skin is the better you are is a direct result of both colonization and slavery in the united states where there was a real actual intentional. kind of brainwashing if you will of all things that were african dark our features were demonized all of that were all of those things that made us uniquely african we were taught to believe that those things that made us inferior and so if you know you had later skin you had looser here you had a straighter nose in other words the closer you approximated the master the one in power the one with privilege then i guess that meant you were that much closer to kind of the promised one or the better ones and unfortunately because colonial nation. let's say the the white man spread his seed all over the world this is been and this is a belief system that has spread throughout all of the people of color throughout the world and it's tragic that there are more people of color in the world who clearly have their own. their own culture their own customs and yet they still look at likeness as some sort of stupid some sort of outward signal of superiority to laurie you are on the. same wavelength as our guests who are also nodding their heads but here this week from jacqueline she says i've always wondered if it's to justify colonization slavery. inequality through avoiding seeing the obvious humanity of darker victims but i want to add in another tweet here because you know we've been talking about women it's not just women you get this from i am colorful quel who says this is what i deal with frequently and it's not just dark skinned women getting the little for their complection he sent us a video comment on what he's had to deal with have a listen to what he told the story. and it's our skin color. me in ways that made me feel and. less attractive than those who have lived skin. i've been told from a very young age that my dark skin is just me. and i need to reach my skin and i. attempted to do so which left me with darker discoloration and parts of my skin and that would be with me for every place where having dark skin does not make me feel bad actually. thank him for sharing that with us butler ron do you think other black men know that they are part of this is still the end part of the problem as well or do you think that they think this is an issue. i want i think that we're actually gaining consciousness and realizing that not only do black man perpetuate this i call it fraud and i call it very offensive but also black women i remember growing up and the the lighter that you were you were considered to be pretty you know and that goes back to what the sister said earlier about the closer proximity you are to whiteness the better looking you will be so in high school you know the most prized guy would be the very minor complected god with the quote unquote curly here or what they would call. quote unquote good good hair or it would be the biracial man and it and it's interesting because not only does colorism of affect the way that the way that we think about ourselves from from the inside but this can also cause us to do things such as bleach in our skin such as permanent perm in our hair and i'm not trying to slam anybody that does that but again going back to what the young lady said earlier all these things we are doing is trying to get us as close to whiteness as possible because the white european be a beauty standard i mean like that's the that's the standard of beauty blonde hair blue eyes so if you can take a person and if they get blue blue contact lenses if they can doctor her blond they can be as dark as me but that's some consciously what they are trying to do to assimilate society and it's a really really sad to have on what. is the level to which. people have internalized and reproduce white supremacy and civil and how white people see too many extent to to an extent then and. not that they expressed shock when like some kind of white friends i know my initially often surprised when they see the level to which we as black people discuss people shade people's hair texture people speeches they are often very surprised and i think as i said it's straining that system that is so beneficial to them they can kind of remain ignorant of and we're wearing ourselves apart. literally margaret and i don't know it's not just i think one of them sometimes it's a slightly misleading word because it's also because i just focus very much on the actual skin shape it's very much to do with had texture and to do with facial features as well people and the guidance the client know that. yeah can what you say i just feel like it is about entirely you know come from hair. for me but i in my community the commits the south sudanese community that i have been around is like the bleaching is bleaching your skin is a big deal in my community and i never understand why you know until i came here to get in i was bullied for being too dark and i realized that this is why they do believe they want to you know feel like they are importing all they blend in and so some new friends we've implemented that their children and yet to be i had this is one of the there's a lot there's one because this is a whole school principals whole thought process is there was i was taught having a conversation with a friend of mine and you know she at the time she was dating a car kid and man you know and then i have never been in remission i was not there that i was not in a car because i was like i you know how does it feel like being in an interracial relationship how does asking a normal question and says i i just want my kids to be lighter and have long enough and i don't want my kid to feel like to go through what i went through i just want my kids have clearly here and i don't want my kids to get made fun of just like i was the one i was like and i'll felt so sad and now i was i felt really bad and i'm like so you married man do you want to have kids with this man because you want your kid to have. like i would love to i would love to talk to your friend because i actually wrote a book called same family different colors because you know kind of inspired by my own situation i my husband is spanish he's very pale and my children are actually came up three different colors and d.n.a. is very funny so just make marry a person of a different race doesn't mean your children are going to come out with that quote unquote good here or that later you know exactly what you're going to get i got three totally different looking children in terms of skin color and hair texture but it is actually people are i mean i don't many women in the research i've done i wrote a book about black hair and i wrote a book about. colorism and the lengths that people will go to women will start trying to straighten their children here children's hair from birth including you're just saying. well varying someone just getting impregnated by somebody strictly to. increase the chance that their offspring will have looser hair or later skin and sadly we've been doing that since we've been enslaved in the united states we have records of in slate women. trying to bleach their children to skin with arsenic and wrapping their hair at birth so yeah i was rate in those out so. it was more about survival it was hoping you or maybe your baby would get taken to the big house and freed are given food or you know given the opportunity to learn to read today we're doing it you know and that's what. yeah i think of it. they come and tell us about it had to start yet but they're shaking exactly and which i agree with them ali he was a dark skinned somali guy and he told me we started out to be like wow i was from and i read what i mix and i always have like often feel that there's like a level of kind of like blackness inherent in it and its isolation of being mixed and stuff but i was a mix so i told him and then he was like you know what i have to i just have to marry an english woman and i count my home and because i wish i'd spent kids so they come out and i would just like i am not the white house even basis that everybody and where can we meet your fiance. not remain in the ivory what i saw was just i mean let me alone to miss the point because i've got i've got nigeria i did not get i did not. and i know you're trying to get in here so i'm going to direct this to you because these are two sides and argument so mike here says living four years in or africa with less pressure on appearance i found that people were more comfortable in their own a skin they were able to process sensitive issues away from in your face images constant see and compare consumerism so he says this could be a problem essentially his saying this could be a problem of being in the west and being bombarded with consumerism on the other hand though robert west sent us a video comment and he says this is a global issue have a look i always think it's best to address color as a global that. it's not a construct in talking about one people or some people but truly horror that is spread across the world i say this as it relates to any attempt to deal with and the most macro and micro way. so. you know now can i say i saw you nodding when i was he has tweeted about this not being a problem if you're in parts of africa but the right i'm wondering what your take on that is ok first i totally agree with the brother that was in new york we have to understand the racism wise for him is he is a global system we can't just say oh you know it's really bad in the south or it's really bad and in parts of london there is no part of the world that racism lies from if he has not touched and coming with that also with the standards of beauty i think think about it this way right so brazil what has the largest population of black people outside of africa right why is it that the most beautiful people that you see coming from brazil are looking like caucasians i mean i believe the model's name. is just ill she's from has it all but but yet there's tons of people that don't look like they don't look like just because they are the most beautiful i'm sort of i guess what the media deems as the most beautiful black women in america usually are highly barry beyond say and other like skin women but the majority of black people don't look like those women so you know even though we can be around a bunch of black people all of our lives colorism will still come up because wise because that's a part of racism i supremacy and that is in that is internalize with us and if people sing the white shirt they're saying that you're on instagram like well why don't you show your instagram account color as well and you can see these these stunning stunning pictures people are for you because of your skin under her skin tone and i know there's a little story about a little girl contacted you yes tell us that story there was a little girl sent me an m s a told me that how she always feel like she's the ugliest girl in the root because of our skin color and she always feel like kids make fun of her just like there's like what does and does like what i went through when i was as her age let's just she's in seventh grade at the moment so she's telling me how much i fire her and how she started to love herself as a person how she see beauty in me and she see herself as beautiful as well so i i just feel like. you just got to learn to love yourself you know i feel like i learned to love myself you know when i came to this country i didn't have a problem with you with my skin color i don't have a problem with how i look until i started been been told. at the mall at the park that you had to blab a kid stare now many people laugh and i mean you know getting a comment from overdrive i don't know you read that story about between me and the older driver that suggested that if i was given ten k. i would i would gladly show my skin for that my money as i think that is just it just felt like i would and then that's when i feel like i would go home and cry to slieve and so my mom why do i look like this mom you know you never told me that my skin was ugly when we was back home why is consider ugly in this country now you know so as it's an ongoing issue and then if you love yourself and you accept to yourself those comments i feel like they don't mean they want to affect you as much we've got to try letting us from eugene you know you are should definitely be breaking the barriers of the conventional concepts of beauty and modernizing what it means to be a twenty first century model but i heard you trying to jump in there laurie were you trying to. yeah no i was just going to say that now. it's so wonderful to hear everything you're saying because the only way that we're going to get past this is if we really talk about it i mean this show is wonderful what you're doing on social media is wonderful because right now even the word colorism isn't even officially a word if you write it on your you know in microsoft word it auto correct it doesn't even exist so we're still struggling with even finding the right language to you know and these conversations that still this idea that this is our dirty laundry within the black community is really hampering us from moving forward. on all the polls a conversation that is so much more to talk about thank you for shining a light. nobody into and their own color is of no ronan. game i want to show something that mike actually tweeted to us at the string when he had we were doing this show he says this is the quote your beautiful skin is so black he must be a milk nineteenth century swazi price. that mike and so watching the street would see you on a high. with documentaries back. at this time on al-jazeera. when the news breaks it was an 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