Dark Girls Summary

The documentary that I viewed was called Dark Girls (Directors: Bill Duke & D. Channsin Berry, 2011). The focus was based on colorism in the African- American community and how it has impacted young girls and women. The directors provided a platform that explored the issue starting with the history of African- American culture down to the aspect of how we would need to begin to heal and overcome this prejudice.
I chose this particular documentary because I am African-American and have personally experienced this issue with myself, my sisters and my daughter. Currently in the African-American community you see that there is a lot of unrest. We see this playing out in the media with the violence that is happening and question how to bring awareness to the issues and to make this better. I feel that this ties heavily to our self-worth and the love and respect that we must have and demand amongst ourselves first.
The directors used several different techniques in creating this documentary. Archival footage was used several times throughout the documentary when discussing the history of African-Americans. There were areas were voice-over was used and the main technique was direct interviews. The entire

documentary was filled with personal accounts of experiencing colorism and how it affected and shaped individuals lives. Professional view points and insight was provided by Psychologists, Psychotherapists, Spiritual Mentors, Medical Physicians and Celebrities.
In viewing this documentary I feel that the directors did a really good job at providing different viewpoints of dark girls.

In the beginning they laid a solid foundation of how color played a large part in African-American history back to the days of slavery. Giving that history is critical to understanding how colorism started within the culture. Continuing on, the documentary build a story line of the impact in society to how the issue is dealt with within the family structure. They spoke to men on their views of dark women and women on their views of dark men. One of the interesting segments was the global impact of colorism. The director’s ability to show examples of colorism in the Korean and Thai culture shed an additional perspective on the

documentary.
As I stated in the beginning I chose this documentary because of my personal experience with colorism. My daughter was a victim of colorism due to her lighter skin tone. This documentary focused on colorism for dark skin but did not mention the issues that lighter skin tone people endure. I think that this issue was not addressed because society glamorizes being of the lighter tone so most disregard the fact that there is reverse colorism in that content. I think it was avoided because it was easier to find individuals with darker skin that had experienced colorism verses those with lighter skin. Also, how would they be able to provide a convincing argument of colorism for what the African-American community has found as the beauty standard for so many decades?
The other issue that I did not see address is what is being done within the African-American communities to educate people about colorism. If we included programs in schools that teach about self-worth, self-esteem, and respect we would be able to add higher value to how we view each other and colorism would decline.