Colorism Healing Founder, Dr. Sarah L. Webb on the Wide-Ranging Impact of Colorism in the Black Community.

In the first interview for Observations In Blackness, I sat down with the founder of Colorism Healing, Dr. Sarah L. Webb to talk about the complexity of talking about complexion in the Black community

I believe the way people are represented in society directly impacts the way people are treated in society - Dr. Sarah L. Webb, Founder at Colorism Healing

I initially met Dr. Sarah L. Webb as a visiting artist in her class when she was an English teacher at Istrouma High in our hometown of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was her time in the classroom at one of the poorest and most systemically disenfranchised schools in Louisiana where Sarah began critically assessing the colorism that was a prominent part of her narrative throughout her entire life.

“I was teaching high school in my hometown of Baton Rouge, it was nearly an all-Black high school, and I was hearing my students say colorist things about themselves and about each other,” Sarah explained. “Hearing my students say ‘I’m less proud of myself because I got dark over the summer,’ hearing my students say ‘ I don’t like this picture cuz I look too Black on here,’ I was like ‘oh, this isn’t just me and it’s not just gonna go away.’”

In my first interview for Observations In Blackness, I talked with Sarah about the work of Colorism Healing, an organization she founded whose mission is to raise critical awareness about colorism as a global issue by providing a hub of information and resources, and to foster healing through creative and critical work.

We had a robust conversation on matters of representation of dark-skinned Black people in media, misconceptions about what colorism entails, what privilege looks like even among marginalized people and much more.

Click the video at the top to watch the interview and learn more about Sarah’s work at colorismhealing.com and through her Instagram page.

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