#BlackOutDay — Catering to Colorism and Conventional Beauty or Black Liberation within Our Features?

The beginnings of #blackoutday started as a project to uplift and strengthen the self-esteem of those who aren't often recognized for their diverse black features. The range goes from light-skin, dark-skin, big lips, big nose, defined cheek bones... and onto the disabled, burn victims, etc. The list goes on when it comes to the amount of people #blackoutday actually touches.

As time goes on and the variety of people added into the hashtag increases, a visible division occurs between light-skins (a.k.a conventional beauties) verses any other form of blackness put beneath them. Considering the fact that this hashtag is meant to make all black people feel like their blackness is being represented, the ongoing competition between light-skins and dark-skins still reins within bringing us all together as one divine race.

We all have one thing in common and that is being black, this is enough to want to support one another and to bring each other acknowledgement for our beauty. A simple retweet of a fellow black person is all it takes to celebrate another being rather than uplifting one type of black individual. Blackness is not limited to what is visibly represented within the media and this is the point of #blackoutday, to prove that black people are not one dimensional but come in all sizes, colours, looks, and beings. To give into what society deems as to what blackness is which is Eurocentric beauty wrapped in small doses of blackness will subject and hide away all the variety blackness is.

Take the time today, to show love towards someone within this hashtag. There is no competition when we are all family.

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