Color Me Problematic

Call me crazy.But I thought we were past some things.You know — basic rights stuff, like healthcare for all, voting rights without chaos. The idea that every American deserves life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without governmental interference.Apparently, that’s so 2008.This week in the year 2025, two things got under my skin in the best and worst ways. First, my guilty pleasure: Love Island. I didn’t watch the show live, but caught up and got hooked by you’re your TikTok and Twitter recaps. I got swept up like half the internet by the stunning couple, Nic and Olandria. Interracial, magnetic, and misunderstood — especially Olandria, a gorgeous dark-skinned woman whose elegance and composure were somehow seen as… too much.Let’s be clear. She wasn’t mean. She wasn’t cold. She was poised. Tender but guarded. Stylish but composed, and one of the best-dressed contestants this season. Yet on these platform were hot-takes, threads flooded with critiques. She was too reserved. Not fun enough. Not "approachable." Comparing and contrasting, it became clear that her darker skin shaped how some of the audience expected her to behave or willfully misinterpreted how she acted.Yes in 2025, dark skin can still means aggressive. Hood. Strong and never soft. Olandia isn’t supposed to be the dream girl.Lighter-skinned contestants, equally quiet or equally assertive, weren’t held to the same standard. Colorism still has reach.Colorism is not new. Slavery institutionalized a caste system where skin tone dictated labor, survival, and status. Lighter-skinned people, whether Indigenous, biracial, or descended from colonizers, were often placed in “preferable” conditions. This twisted logic follows us through Reconstruction, through Jim Crow, through beauty pageants, and now reality TV.When I was researching Island Queen and came across the remarkable life of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, a formerly enslaved woman who owned businesses across the West Indies and had a documented affair with a prince of England, I assumed she must’ve been biracial and fair-skinned — it’s what I’d been conditioned to expect with such access, desirability, and favoritism.But no.Dorothy was dark-skinned, described as striking, admired by politicians, desired by colonial men. Her achievements should be taught in school — and yet she’s barely remembered. One wonders if we would know her name if her skin were lighter like Elizabeth Dido Belle or her life more scripted and tragic like Sally Hemmings.Dorothy Kirwan Thomas was the exception, not the rule, in a world that often refuses to associate darkness with beauty or softness or wealth.That’s why I paused and shared the recent New York Times article celebrating The Gilded Age on HBO. The series is well done and its portrayal of Black high society in the 1880s is masterful. The article features Phylicia Rashad, Audra McDonald, and Denée Benton discussing the dual burden of classism and colorism.As Denée speaks about working on the show: “We have an opportunity to show something that’s never been onscreen. We have to widen this lens.”Phylicia says, “The concerns of an era might be different, but people are still people.”Audra adds, “But where we are right now, some of them are quite similar.”Colorism didn’t disappear with integration. I know that because I went to school in the “colorblind” North and still experienced the paper bag test, a cruel whisper from Jim Crow, it was obvious.Colorism didn’t vanish when we elected a Black president.It’s why books like The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett struck such a nerve in 2020. Set in the fictional town of Mallard, it shows families fracturing under the pressure to assimilate and even pass.I return to this quote from Sonali Dev’s 2019 novel, Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors — a love story between a darker-skinned Rawandan Anglo-Indian chef and a lighter-skinned Indian-American neurosurgeon:“The syntax of prejudice—threaded into conversation with the perfect pauses and facial expressions—was like ciphers and spy codes. The meaning clear to those it was meant for. To everyone else, it was harmless scribbles. Easy enough to deny.”Denying the lingering effects of colorism is sad. It hides in tone and tone policing. In the silence of those who don’t speak up or question biases. It can even come down to who we’re allowed to root for.So no, we haven’t solved colorism, classism, or the big R word.Yet there’s hope in storytelling.I applaud The Gilded Age for giving us something new for TV, portraying Black affluence in the 1800s with elegance, and power and nuance.And to my fellow writers: I say don’t stop. The market may shift. Budgets may tighten. But keep telling stories that challenge the hierarchy and bias. Keep writing histories that include all aspects of humanity now and in the past.Readers? Please lock in.Buy the books.Request them at libraries.Share titles that stir...