Skin bleaching: Contempt, hatred, fear
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
- Venue
- Russell Square: College Buildings
- Room
- Kamran Djam Lecture Theatre (DLT)
About this event
Shirley Anne Tate, Leeds
Branding skin lightening ‘anti-Black spectacle’ undermines its decolonization of colourism. Through lightening the Black woman’s body becomes the Sable-Saffron Venus alter/native of normative beauty based on white/ light-skin and reveals the colourism of the Black Atlantic. The lightened body refuses the white or light ideal in favor of the in-between space of ‘browning’, a Black Jamaican aesthetic ideal. It also shows the white/light-skinned ideal’s tenacity in the racialized aesthetic space of the UK/US. The discussion looks at the ‘racial grammar’ (Bonilla-Silva, 2012) of skin lightening. Colourism and anti-Black racism in the UK/US and Jamaica moves the discussion to skin lightening and global capital. Saffron-Sable Venus alter/natives emerge through the ‘race’ performativity of skin lightening as a Black mask that defies racialized domination by revealing colourism.
Organiser: Dr Gina Heathcote
Contact email: gh21@soas.ac.uk
Contact Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4367