Saadia wants to put a stop to the toxic colorism within her Pakistani family, for the sake of her daughters. And sociologist Joanna Rondilla, who studies colorism, race and beauty standards, speaks with Juleyka about how this type of prejudice is perpetuated in our intimate circles, and where to focus our energy when pushing back.
Saadia Khan is the founder, producer and host of the Immigrantly podcast.
If you loved this episode, be sure to listen to to When Our Parents Don't See Their Bias, and The Mixed Privilege of Being a White Immigrant.
Featured Expert:
Joanne L. Rondilla is an award-winning educator. She is Filipina, born in Dededo, Guam. Joanne and her family moved to the San Francisco bay area (Union City) when she was thirteen years old. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley (M.A., Ph.D.) and UC Santa Barbara (B.A.). Currently, she is an assistant professor in Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences (SISS) and Asian American Studies at San Jose State University. Her research interests include: race, gender, colorism, beauty, media representations, pop culture, and colonialism. Learn more about her work here.
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Juleyka Lantigua:
Hi everybody. Today, we have Saadia with us. Growing up, Saadia's Pakistani family constantly praised her for her light skin. As an adult, she's realized just how problematic this all was. And now that she's a mom, she sees very clearly how these beauty standards that her family continues to reinforce negatively impact her own daughters. So she's eager to speak with her parents about how toxic colorism is. Let's get into it.
Saadia: My name is Saadia Khan. I am a rights activist, social entrepreneur, founder, and host of a weekly podcast called Immigrantly, which talks about race, identity, and the immigrant experience. I'm also a mom and a coffee drinker. And growing up, I called my parents, I still do, Abbu and Monay.
So the idea of colorism in our household was never explicitly discussed. In fact, I don't think when I was growing up in Pakistan, there was a vocabulary to define what it meant. But I knew as a child that there were certain privileges that accrued to people with light skin or lighter skin versus people with dark skin. And as someone who is light-skinned, I felt as if it was a gift that was given to me, the amount of attention I would get as a child and as a young woman in my teenage years. There was a lot of conversation around desirability.
And when I look back, I can think of so many incidents where I was complimented exclusively based on my skin color, "Oh, you can wear any color clothes because you're light skinned," "Oh, you can wear any color or any shade of lipstick because you're light skinned." And that really became something that I felt I needed to preserve and protect.
I did a lot of crazy shit to protect my skin color. There was a time in my teenage years, and I'm so ashamed to say this, where I stopped going out almost during summertime. I would just sit at home, not go out in sun, because I thought if I went out in sun, I would become dark. Or I would use lightening creams and I would do all sorts of masks and facials.
So my understanding of colorism has been an evolution. Just coming to the US, I really realized what it really meant to be discriminated against and, beyond that, when my daughter was born. Now, my daughter has darker skin than me. I remember when she was born, a lot of my family and extended family, friends called me to congratulate me. And the first question a lot of people asked was, was she light-skinned? And that to me was such an eye-opener.
So when my relatives saw her pictures and they were like, "Oh my gosh. She's not light-skinned. Who did she take after?," I had a lot of mixed reactions. The first thing that came to my mind was, "Oh, this is what everybody in Pakistan asks. This is what elders ask. It's okay. Just ignore it. It doesn't matter." But then as I sat with it, and then progressively every time we would go back to Pakistan and they would pass comments on my daughter, then it became more real and it became more painful for me to see that judgment being passed constantly.
My daughter has definitely been impacted by colorism. And as they were growing up, my husband and I have always told them how beautiful they are. And as a parent, my role is affirmation of who she is. But colorism is pretty much part of American society. And no matter what parents tell their kids, or even if kids did not feel it at home, they can feel it in American society, especially brown girls and women and Black girls and women.
My daughter, she is bothered by the Eurocentric beauty standards in America and how they impact her as a teenager, as she is out in the society, how she's discovering herself, she's discovering her sexuality, she's discovering her physical attributes and how she perceives other's perception of her.
My parents, I know that this topic may not be a comfortable topic for them. And the irony is that Pakistan is a very religious society, and Islam is a very egalitarian religion. On the surface, they would like to think that they will not discriminate on the basis of skin color, and that's not true. And therefore, it's tricky for me to talk to my parents about it, because I know if I did, and I think I did once, my dad was like, "Yeah. But in our religion, everybody's equal. And I would never discriminate on the basis of skin color." But at the same time, I know my dad has certain preferences.
If I could speak to my parents openly about colorism, I would tell them that despite what they may think, colorism is so harmful and it is impacting and has impacted their family in ways that they probably don't understand.
Lantigua: As a Dominican woman, I'm very familiar with colorism. And Saadia's predicament rang so true for me also. But trying to correct within our families an issue that they probably don't even recognize as a problem can sometimes feel impossible.
Saadia's story also made me want to better understand exactly what colorism is. How does it show up in our relationships? How do we internalize it? And she also made me wonder, "How can we as first gens avoid passing colorism down to our children?" To help us figure it out, I called in an expert.
Joanne Rondilla:
My name is Joanne Rondilla, and I am an Assistant Professor in Sociology and Asian American Studies at San Jose State University.
Lantigua: So as you listened, what did you hear in Saadia's story?
Rondilla: Right out of the gate, the first thing she mentioned was, as a child, she knew that there was this inequity and this privilege that was attached to having lighter skin because of that messaging specifically from the family. And I think that this is important, because colorism is a looks-based system of discrimination that occurs within the same racial or ethnic group. And so there's an in-
Lantigua: Oh, so it has to be within the same...
Rondilla: It's within the same racial or ethnic group.
Lantigua: Oh.
Rondilla: And, yeah. And that's what makes colorism and racism distinct.
Lantigua: Yes.
Rondilla: It's very different.
Lantigua: Okay. Why does that matter?
Rondilla: It matters because colorism has an intimacy to it.
Lantigua: Oh.
Rondilla: So if you refer back to Saadia's... The messaging about lighter skin being more desirable, it's not coming from television. It's not coming from media. It's coming from the family.
And when you think about the family as an unconditional love space, you pay attention to that messaging.
Lantigua: Yes.
Rondilla: Right? When you're getting messages about light skin privilege from media, you as a person can say, "Well, that's the media perpetuating capitalist messages about value," et cetera. But when that messaging is coming from your family, from people that you love, notions of colorism are so normalized. Because it's coming from such an intimate space, it's hard to challenge those messages.
Lantigua: Wow. Okay. I'm Dominican.
Rondilla: Mm-hmm.
Lantigua: And this beloved little island of mine, oh my God, there are layers to the colorism. So let's talk a little bit about when we begin to make these distinctions amongst ourselves in our little tribe called the family. What begins to happen to the identity formation of the recipient of such terms?
Rondilla: It causes, I think, this separation. And so let me share my own experience with colorism, because…So for context, my mom passed away in 2021, and I remember one day she called me and she recalled the story of when I was seven years old. We went to the Philippines. And one of my uncles married into a Mestizo family, a mixed race. They're light skinned Filipinos.
And mind you, I'm originally from Guam, born and raised. You can't not be dark on Guam.
Lantigua: Right.
Rondilla: Right? It's almost the-
Lantigua: The sun is everywhere.
Rondilla: Yeah. And then I think that that trip at seven years old was the first time I learned that love in the family is actually conditional, because there was so much ogling over my uncle's kids, because they're all lighter than us. They're more beautiful. And it was sort of, "Oh, these are the special cousins." Right?
So my mom is recounting this story of I was playing with my cousin Judith, and she and my Uncle Eddie are watching us. And out of the blue, my Uncle Eddie just tells my mom, "Do you realize how ugly your child is?"
Lantigua: Oh my God.
Rondilla: And my mom is telling me this story. And in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, "Why are you sharing this with me?," because I remember that trip in the Philippines being very formative in terms of how I understood my own value in the family.
I realize why she's sharing this. She's actually sharing her embarrassment, because she didn't say anything to my uncle. She kept saying, "Can you imagine the nerve of your uncle to say these things?" And all I kept thinking was, "Wow. Finally, you understood what that trip meant to me."
Lantigua: I want you to put your sociologist hat back on, but I also want to say thank you for sharing that, because I think that a lot of us who don't meet some sort of beauty standard experience these things and buried them somewhere in our psyche.
Rondilla: Yeah.
Lantigua: And so it's difficult sometimes, especially in the context of being a parent, right?
Rondilla: Mm-hmm.
Lantigua: So I am a mom to two beautiful, amazing little boys who happen to be mixed with Nigerian. That's my ex-husband, right? And they are much darker than me. And they have such a great sense of self, but it does come up sometimes. When one wants to be mean to the other, they'll just pick literally on their looks and on their skin color, right?
Rondilla: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Lantigua: And so there is a natural propensity to basically go for the gut punch. However, in the pre-colonial history of, say, the Philippines, does this come up or is this something that came with colonization only?
Rondilla: Okay. So when you're looking at pre-colonial Philippines and also in other parts of the world, in pre-colonial societies, there are forms of colorism that exist. And a lot of that has to do with skin tone being the marker between the royal classes or the wealthy classes versus the working class, because before colonization, working class people worked out in the field. And so if you had darker skin, it was-
Lantigua: You're a laborer.
Rondilla: ... an indicator, yeah, that you're a laborer. But what colonization does is it basically infiltrates these different societies and does a version of, "Oh, there's this type of colorism that exists? Hold my beer. Let's really lean into this."
Colonizers are very good at making sure that people who are subjugated are so busy fighting against each other that they forget who the larger enemy is, which is the colonizer.
Lantigua: Right.
Rondilla: Something that is important for people to remember is that colorism is this system that maintains anti-Black and anti-indigenous racism within colonized communities, because when you talk to people of color, especially in the United States, no one wants to admit that they're racist.
Lantigua: Of course not.
Rondilla: But people do engage in colorist or colorism type actions. And it's embedded in the everyday things, such as insulting people by way of how they look, right, staying indoors or doing everything you can to not get dark.
Lantigua: Yeah.
Rondilla: Right? Or refusing to date or marry darker-skinned people.
Lantigua: Okay. But how do we talk to our families about this stuff when it's happening to my kid?
Rondilla: Yes.
Lantigua: How do I do that without causing a historical riff?
Rondilla: What we have to remember is our loved ones come from a particular time and context, and that particular time and context informs their notions of beauty, informs their notions of value.
And in order for them to change those things, it's going to take a lot of work. And majority of the time, it's work that they don't want to do, right?
So if we go back to Saadia's story and her attempt to talk to her parents, they say something along the lines of, "Well, we're religious people. We would never do anything harmful," but yet, in action, they're doing something harmful.
So our loved ones come from a particular mentality that unfortunately we don't have the power to change, and so surrender to the fact that the desired outcome that you're hoping for is not going to happen.
But knowing that, you do that anyway. You engage in the conversation. And the reason why is because, especially within the family, you have to understand that if you decide to take on this role of being the person who wants to change the conversation about colorism, the greater purpose is not changing the mindset of our elders. It's being the person in the room for younger people to hear, because that's the conversation that you're ultimately changing.
Lantigua: Okay.
Rondilla: For so long in my own life, everybody was so silent. And I took that silence as agreement, when perhaps agreement wasn't there, right? So you have to be the one to voice that.
And then in terms of parents and children... And to preface, I'm not a parent. So I say this as a daughter. I think it's important to raise kids with a foundation of identity. And oftentimes, first gens as children of immigrants, we often don't have the origin story of our parents and our grandparents. As the daughter of two immigrants from the Philippines, any foundation that I did have to stand on always pointed to anti-Asian, anti-Filipino sentiment. It always pointed to erasure.
Lantigua: I agree with everything you said, except that a lot of what you're saying are really high level conversations that require a lot of cultural context, a maturity level.
How do you tell a five year-old, "No, baby. You are beautiful and brilliant and wonderful. And grandma just sees the world differently, but you still have to love her and cherish her because she loves and cherishes you?" It's difficult.
Rondilla: Yes. So I think you start there. Let the child know, "Your grandma loves you anyway. Your Lola loves you anyway." And then piece by piece, I think it's important to draw the picture of, "What was the world that Lola or grandma was raised in?" It helps them hopefully process, hopefully, "Okay. It's not that grandma doesn't love me. It's that how she understands the world really is about her own self-preservation." So she says this not because she means to. She says this because she was taught. And then ultimately, that child will learn that just because this was the world that Lola was raised in and these are the ideas that she inhabited and eventually shared, it doesn't mean that these are the same ideas that I'm going to be raised in.
You're trying to build a child holistically. So it's about piecing together these small stories. How can we understand our family and still remember that, at the end of the day, they love us? Right? When my mom passed away, something that I wrote in her eulogy was, "Our mom does not always have the right words. But at the end of the day, she's always on our side."
Lantigua: That is such a beautiful note to end on. Thank you, Joanne. Thank you for sharing your personal stories. Please, please come back.
Rondilla: Yes, I would love to.
Lantigua: All right. Here's what Joanne taught us today.
Check yourself. Colorism is perpetuated within intimate spaces like our nuclear and extended families. So be conscious of your behavior, your language, and the values you absorb and those that you reinforce, because they can have a deep and lasting impact.
Accept and surrender. If your family just doesn't want to work on their own bias, you probably won't be able to change their mind. It's worth a try, though. But some of it might just be beyond your control.
And remember, model for the future. Challenge old ideas and voice your disagreement for the sake of those coming up behind you. Step up as a role model, support system, and even as a source of inspiration for the younger members of your family.
Thank you for listening and for sharing us. How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] about Anything is an original production of LWC Studios. Virginia Lora is the show's producer. Tren Lightburn mixed this episode. I'm the creator and host, Juleyka Lantigua. On Twitter and Instagram, we are @TalkToMamiPapi. Bye everybody. Talk to you soon.
CITATION:
Lantigua, Juleyka, host. “She's Upset Her Parents Celebrate Her Light Skin Tone”
How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] about Anything,
LWC Studios., March 13, 2023. TalkToMamiPapi.com.