It’s one thing to argue that skin color preference is socially conditioned. It’s another thing to clarify why that matters. I wrote a post years ago called “Preference or Prejudice” that I want to cite and expound on this week. But I want to put greater focus on what’s next once we understand the roots of those preferences.
Watch, Listen, or Scroll to Read More
It’s not “Just” a Preference
I actually think the word “preference” is fine and valid to use. My only pushback is with the word or the attitude that it’s “just” a benign, coincidental, natural or biological, innocent, trivial preference.
It’s true that we all have preferences. It’s also true that most, if not all, of our preferences are conditioned. Even if we weren’t directly conditioned, our parents or ancestors were conditioned and we inherit their conditioned responses. It’s called epigenetic memory.
Most people who are biased or bigoted don’t experience themselves that way. They feel it as a preference. So I say: Yes, you can have a preference, and your preference can be colorist. You can have a racist, sexist, homophobic, fatphobic and colorist preference.
Imagine a school teacher saying:
I just prefer to teach white students. No offense. I’m not racist. I don’t have anything against Black students. I just prefer not to teach them.
Imagine a neighbor saying:
We just prefer not to have any Black or Brown neighbors. We prefer to live in all white subdivisions only.
Most of us would classify those statements as racist. So wouldn’t a statement like: I just prefer light skin chicks, also be colorist?
What, Exactly, is Conditioning?
I first learned about conditioning, as in “classical conditioning,” in my intro to psychology course in college. What it boils down to is that animals, including humans, can be trained/conditioned to associate one thing with another unrelated thing if they’re repeatedly exposed to both of those things simultaneously.
The concept was developed with dogs salivating when they heard a bell because they came to associate the bell with food, simply because the scientist rang a bell every time they fed the dogs. But it could have been anything, They could have used bird sounds, a jack hammer, nails on a chalkboard. The sound is completely random, but by strategically pairing it with food, the dogs were trained so that the sound of a bell triggered their instinctive appetite.
Other scientists have replicated this using mice and electric shock, for example. Over time, researchers found that the offspring of animals who received a certain type of conditioning also exhibited the same behavior even though the offspring themselves had never received that direct conditioning.
Dr. Joy Degruy brings this home with her research on the Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.
Sources of Social Conditioning
So what are the ways we’re collectively conditioned to have these type of preferences?
Our parents, caregivers, or extended family are usually our first teachers. In many cases they explicitly teach colorism. Other times, they implicitly teach it with their own choices and lifestyle or with more subtle comments. There’s also the case of them simply not doing anything to counter mainstream conditioning, which is my next point.
Outside of the immediate home, and also the place where our parents and family got their conditioning from, is the larger society and mainstream media of all forms. Here I’m not just including movies and TV shows. I’m also including radio, print media, including newspapers, school textbooks, billboards, product packaging… literally everything.
And through extreme violence, White Europeans dominated all of these forms of conditioning for generations, for centuries. And they utilized them as frontline weapons to assert and maintain their violent regimes.
Which brings me to why being brutally honest about our preferences really matters so much.
Why the Source of Skin Color Preference Matters
When we can acknowledge how our skin color preferences came to be, we must then acknowledge that choosing to maintain, uphold, or promote those preferences is doing the work of white violence.
The other reason this matters is that highlights that we have the option to RE-program, to RE-condition our minds. We are blessed with neuroplasticity and can unlearn, relearn, retrain and ultimately liberate our minds.
Affirmation:
I have the choice and the power to liberate my own mind.
