a catskill eagle

karnythia:

notesonascandal:

genderundefined:

lacigreen:

gtfothinspo:

karnythia:

notesonascandal:

Whiteness is a hell of a drug.

This shit is being sold in a ‘hood beauty & barber supply store. In a Black ass mall. In Black ass PG County, Maryland. 

Ugh, and you know this shit is pure poison that’s damage the skin of anyone who uses it.

I went to India a few years ago and in all of the shops I went into they had these kinds of ‘whitening’ products. But they were Garnier. Like, the same ‘beauty’ products as you could get anywhere else but they all were to make your skin whiter. Not cute.

I had a few friends in college who bleached their skin :(
Here’s a really awesome essay on skin bleaching and white supremacy. 

Hmmm… this is something I don’t have much familiarity with.  I work in the personal care industry and was not aware of the trend in India in particular for products that produce skin whitening.

Not having cultural context (which I will never really have) I was thinking something along the lines of the posters quoted above.

But then I actually met one of the people involved in the production of these products a fellow who told me that he was born and raised in India and came to the USA for graduate school.  I asked him what the appeal of skin whitening products were and he talked to me about a rich and long history of clear light skin as part of the beauty norm of India.  A history that from what he told me long predated colonial occupation.

Being that I have never left the United states he could have been pulling my leg and admittingly I wouldn’t know.

Assuming he told me the truth the lesson I took out of it was that I (as a white person) should be careful to jump to conclusions regarding something I might see as racist or supremacist.

The fact that you, as a White American, had to have an Indian person tell you about the implications and realities of colorism the white beauty standard behind these products SO THAT YOU KNOW THAT IT’S REAL (somewhat/a lil’ bit/maybe) tells me a lot about white people, America and Whiteness in America. 

All I can do is laugh at the idea that one non black POC from outside America is supposed to be the voice of authority about colorism inside America. I’m not sure this is a healthy laugh, but it is a laugh.

In response to genderundefined (if I’m following how tumblr works properly) the idea that I (a white person, or anyone I guess) would need to be **careful** about jumping to the conclusion that white supremacy is a problem is kind of pathetic. What’s the worst that could happen there if I misidentified something that LOOKED LIKE white supremacy as white supremacy? I guess you could think about the answer to that question for a minute, and think about what the worst would be if white supremacy was discounted, and you could think about what is more likely?/what happens more often (the misidentification or the discounting)…

But actually such a misidentification would never happen, because it seems to me if it looks like white supremacy, then it acts like white supremacy, and thus it is white supremacy.