I deliberately take a yawning and gasping breath and simultaneously rebuke and reprimand myself for my power and faculty of being stagy and actressy about a certain matter which is rather humdrum and mundane in context.
Dihan has been my long-time crush and the lush in my crush is a bleeding faint blush in his cheeks. The gash is not my guilt, but its healing is my liability. I have never found Dihan being a misogynist and the ecstasy of such a fact makes me immensely elated.
However, in contrast, ever since, I came to know him and developed an erotic, romantic and even aphrodisiac infatuation on him, I have often felt myself being immoderately and inordinately discriminated and prejudiced by Dihan’s pivotal sense of distaste, disapprobation and aversion on short haired dark-skinned women.
The roots of colorismare found in racism; when racism vanishes into the invisibility, a person’s worth, utility and deemed preeminence and perfection would not treat the colour of complexion as a matter that deserves a significant attention. I still remain in doubt as to how colourists are born; are they self-made or do their pedigrees and backgrounds influence with the making of a man whose ways and means and whims and fancies symbolize the characteristics of someone who belongs to the calibre of practicing colourists.
Defining colourism
The Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries define colourism as “The unfair treatment of people with darker skin, often among people of the same ethnic group”. “When we think of racism in the US especially, we think of anti-Black attitudes or institutional processes that entrench whiteness at the top of the social hierarchy”, Colleen Campbell, a PhD candidate in Sociology and African Studies at the University of Princeton remarks.
Research indicates that factors such as ignorance, self-hatred, programming and post traumatic slavery disorder may contribute towards colourism where the men with rooted Victorian sentimentals, living in the former British colonies may develop an antagonistic and hostile attitude over dark-skinned women who tend to be passionate about them, despite their odious and ornery stance that hurts and stabs the universally acclaimed human rights principles.
To the utter dismay and astonishment of the parties, affected by colorism, some people in the subcontinent are still lamentably colour struck; even in the island, albeit everybody does not belong to the very same cohort of people who can be colour biased, even now, there remains a cross section of the population which invariably includes my crush being moved, inspired and attracted by women with lighter skin colours.
Colourism becomes a disgraced English noun that stands as a global social and cultural construct of which roots are acutely and intensely ingrained and encapsulated with racism; based on the existing circumstances, it either silently or openly takes its command where predominantly the Asian, Black and Latino American communities become vulnerable.
Writing to an international journal, a certain researcher who has had obnoxious and repugnant encounters with her colour biased partner highlights “I don’t date colours.
I date people. Someone’s shade shouldn’t determine their value and beauty”. Leonard Woolf in his debut novel set in the then Ceylon introduces the Sri Lankans as “The chocolate brown-skinned Ceylonese”. Like the sun casts a yellowish hue on the sea, the Sri Lankan skin too has got a slightly yellow tinge which is principally jutting in the people who are dark-skinned.
Hyperpigmentation
As remarked by the dermatologists, the Sri Lankan skin is mostly susceptible to hyperpigmentation that makes certain areas of the skin darker.
My research finds that my crush’s cherished colour red more often than not is connected and identical with love and romance; it is vested with the power of generating a predominant sense to have this one up top-right from the crimsoned, bloomed and glowed cheeks and tiny and ruby lips to love-hearts and Red Tulips, Red Lilies, Red Asters, Dahlias, Heluotropes and even forget-me-nots. Red is said to be a flaming and blazing colour that could evoke and provoke the notion and hunch of my crush’s potency and passion.
