Kristin Salter

I think that college-age students can deal with this by not condoning the thought that lighter skinned black people are better off than darker skinned black people. It is hard because media does not make the situation better. For instance, one of the most popular rap artist’s of our time Lil’ Wayne has a line in one of his recent songs that says, “beautiful black woman, I bet that bitch look better red” (“red” meaning light skinned). This creates a lasting problem because black people are not his only audience, in fact there are many white people that love listening to Lil’ Wayne. So now instead of only black people noticing and placing judgments on light skin verses dark skin, white people may think one is better than the other as well. But what about the white people that get tans on a regular? How come nobody ever questions their wanting to be darker like they question the black person who wants to always be in the shade in the summer time to preserve their light skin color? Or when there is a group of white people with one “token black boy/girl”, that one black person is typically one of the darkest black people but the white group he/she is hanging with does not reject him/her. So personally I think that the whole light skin verses dark skin perception is media induced. Some people fall victim to those awful perceptions and others do not, it all depends on the individual.