Colorism in Media | Group Eevee

    Colorism, or the lack of representation of Black people, is prevalent in media. A section of media that experiences colorism but doesn't garner enough attention is video games.     Video games  are games played electronically by manipulating images produced by a computer program on a display screen. They feature a multitude of games including: action, strategy, sports, adventure, simulation and more topics.      A game that possesses a lack of representation of dark skin people is Man of Medan . There are four Black characters; three of the Black characters are light-skinned (non-antagonists), while the other Black character is a pseudo kidnapper/ thief, and he’s the darkest of all three of them. He is made to look scary in the game, while the other three are not.     Additionally, in T elltale’s The Walking Dead , the main character Clem is black, and she is made to look racially ambiguous. Both of her parents are black, but he...

       Over the past few years, the Black Girl Magic movement has exploded onto the movie and television screens across the country. Although it's a huge step for on-screen representation, there's just one problem: This representation tends to be limited by Hollywood's colorist problem. Young female blackness displayed on the big screen does not represent the range of blackness seen in today’s society. Based on American media, an outsider could rightfully assume the vast majority of black women in this country are light-skinned, which is not the case. Despite the rise in diversity on film, many Black girls are not still not seeing many actors who look like them on-screen. To be clear, Hollywood’s issue of colorism is not the fault of light-skinned actresses. They are not the ones perpetuating the belief that a Black woman must have light skin and straight or curly hair to be cast as a leading lady. The fault lies with Hollywood producers and casting agents who refu...

    The lack of representation in films and media, also known as colorism, is conveyed throughout live-action forms of media. But, did you know that it even occurs in animated movies?      When Princess Tiana, from Disney's Princess and The Frog , made an appearance for the trailer Disney's  Wreck-It Ralph 2 , the animators changed the original features she had. In the trailer, they made her nose much smaller than her original nose, and they made her lips dainty and small in comparison to her full lips that she had in her original film. And to top it off, they changed her skin tone from a darker shade of melanin to a lighter shade of melanin.      It took public outrage on social media for the changes to be made for the final release. Although they recognized her blackness and kept some of her features like her natural hair, the changes they did alter changed the character fans grew to love and adore. It may have seemed like a small chan...

     Colorism is just as prominent in the music industry as it is in the film industry. Lighter skinned women are oftentimes given better opportunities within the music industry. An example is Destiny Child, one of the most popular R&B groups in the late '90s. Destiny Child has changed their group members a few times while they were together, however, one thing that never changed was Beyoncé as the lead singer. Beyoncé happened to be the lighter woman out of the group. Destiny Child's former manager (also Beyoncé's father) Mathew Knowles even said himself, after the group separated, that "Beyoncé's career was affected by her lighter skin and that the effect might have been the opposite for Destiny child's bandmate Kelly Rowland," (woman on the right) as stated on the article ''Mathew Rowland says Beyonce's Career Benefited, Kelly Rowland's suffered From Skin Tone Bias" on Variety. Another example of colorism taking place in the mus...

        It is no secret that colorism is a problem within the entertainment industry. For a long time, the Black community in general were not being represented in the industry. As the years went on, we were able to make a huge difference. Now it is very common to see "Black" movies, shows and networks. Although the Black community has had extreme processes, we are still not all being properly represented.      It seems to be a battle between light skin and dark skin women. It was instilled in us since slavery that lighter-skinned women were more appreciated compared to darker-skinned women. The light skin women were able to work in the house, while the dark skin women had to work in the field. Both were terrible circumstances, however, it was slightly better for the house slaves. Although times have changed tremendously, unfortunately, the idea seems to still be embedded in our people's minds.      Lighter skinn...