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The Colorism Healing Timeline:
- June 6, 1985: Born to a light-skinned mother from South Louisiana and a dark-skinned father, with a dark-skinned older brother, and a light-skinned older sister. My parents divorced early and my mom, my siblings, and I were, still are, very close and tight knit. My extended family also runs nearly the full gamut of phenotypes, very dark to very light, with varying hair textures and features. And I was raised in South Louisiana, experienced and witnessed colorism throughout childhood, especially in comparison to my lighter sister.
- Summer 2011: I had just graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing, and I was teaching 9th grade English in my hometown of Baton Rouge, LA. I started a blog called SL Writes in order to maintain a writing practice and have my own creative outlet.
- I posted about colorism for the first time when I saw a trailer for the Dark Girls documentary. I wasn’t using the term “colorism” yet. I used phrases like “skin color bias” or “skin tone bias.”
- As a result of my blogging, a podcast host, Dr. Culbreth who started The Intraracial Colorism Project, reached out to me to co-host and help her with her work. This was my introduction to the word “colorism.” This was also the first time I did anything like radio or podcasts. And these were also live! During this time, Soledad O’Brian released Who is Black in America, bringing the colorism conversation more main stream and introducing my to Yaba Blay and Kiara Lee.
- 2011-2013: I was deep into blogging culture, writing guest posts, freelance writing articles for Dig Magazine, ghostwriting blog posts, and I attended my first Blogging While Brown conference founded by Gina McCauley.
- I get initial fans of my blog, and realize that the work has international reach. In the very early days, two readers I communicated with most often were Black men from and living in Brazil. But others as well sent emails, hopped on phone calls, etc. Some are still around, like Stella Mpisi, a Black South African woman who emailed me very early on as well. And Jyoti Gupta of The Colourism Project.
- 2013: A few weeks after returning home from my first BWB conference, I decided to start a blog exclusively about colorism, what you now know as Colorism Healing. My intention was for it to be a hub of information and resources and ongoing conversation to raise awareness about colorism and to promote healing and solutions. I started with the half dozen posts about colorism from my first blog, and republished them as the starting point for the new website.
- I had already worked for Michael C. Bush and learned from him about Mission, Vision, and Values, so I established that from the outset and it hasn’t really changed since then! My wording has been slightly adjusted, but it’s basically been the same since 2013.
- 2013: After realizing that several people found my blog by searching for poems about colorism, I decided to host a poetry contest to generate poems about colorism. I reached out to some pretty famous people to be judges, including Sharon G. Flake, author of The Skin I’m In, and was pleasantly surprised when she and the others agreed!
- The website helps me realize that colorism would be my reason for going back to get my PhD. I had delayed applying until I knew what I wanted to study and knew what my focus would be. And colorism turned out to be it. So I apply, somewhat late in the game.
- 2014: The first contest is launched to a great success of over 300 submissions. It was fully self-funded.
- I’m told that I’ve made the waiting list for grad school at LSU. And over the summer I get accepted. But starting graduate school in the Fall of 2014, meant I couldn’t afford the time, finances, or resources to do another contest.
- 2015: I take most of the year off to focus on my doctoral program, so there’s no contest, and I only publish a few blog posts when I can find the time.
- 2016: I bring back the contest and start accepting essays as well as international submissions!
- Begin teaching colorism workshops and trainings at schools and in the local community.
- 2017: This time I use a GoFundMe campaign to help cover a chunk of the contest cost. First ever CHWC anthology is published (for 2014 and 2016)! I start my official CH Instagram account to promote it! I already had a Facebook page, but the start of my IG has proven to be a more consequential milestone.
- 2017: Another contest and another anthology! I host the first ever live book launch!
- 2018: I successfully defend my dissertation and become Dr. Sarah L. Webb. I get hired by the University of Illinois Springfield for a tenure track faculty position in the Department of English and Modern Langauges. Graduation. Move to Illinois Another Contest and another anthology!
- 2019: Taking another long break from public posting to give myself time and space to adjust to the new occupation and new location. That first winter was rough!!
- Later that year, I start selling T-Shirts and merch! But I eventually stop promoting that too.
- 2020: I bring the contest back again with the help of a student intern who had taken my Intro to Creative Writing course the semester before. I keep learning and studying this social media, online content creation, media influencer biz.
- Then the world and I myself are completely changed forever…
- I go viral on TikTok. And my IG sees massive growth as well after years of hovering well below 4,000.
- I also launch my coaching and consulting services and see an increase in requests to speak.
- 2021: Mantra- “Getting it done in 2021.” The TED Talk. Choosing to leave academia to10 pursue Colorism Healing full time.
- 2022: “It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me.”
- Possible Mantra: Breaking through in 2022
- I have lots of ideas, but my priority now is to stabilize what I’ve already got going on and make it a solid foundation to build on in the future.
Who, What, Why, How
All of the above and more that I didn’t even mention have contributed to who I am, what I’m doing, and why and how I’m doing it.
Who: My public name is Dr. Sarah L. Webb, Dr. Webb, or Dr. Sarah. Family and friends call me Sarah. I am a dark-skinned African American woman, cis-gender, heterosexual, tall, thin, able-bodied. I am trained as a writer and teacher. Public intellectual, activist-scholar. I have been single and I don’t have kids.
As a dark-skinned, African American woman, I have to overcome the layers of bias against those identities, specifically related to colorism. These layers include things like:
- assuming I haven’t done my research, which I believe is tied to perceptions of laziness and overall credibility
- assuming that I’m less analytical/scholarly and more anecdotal/personal, tied to assumptions about the relative intelligence of 1) women, 2) Black people, 3) dark-skinned people.
- assuming my knowledge and reach is limited to the African American context
- assuming I’m less objective than other people
- assuming I don’t love myself or that I struggle with self-esteem, when they don’t make those assumptions about lighter-skinned people who talk about colorism.
- assuming that my goal is to convince black men to like me, especially relevant because I am single.
And so my use of “Dr.” and my frequent use of words like “international” and “global” are purposeful.
What: My mission statement is: 1) Raise critical awareness about colorism as a global issue by providing a hub of information and resources, and 2) Foster healing through creative and critical work. Healing includes 3 key components: Individual healing includes personal mental health and reprogramming implicit bias. Collective healing involves repairing relationships between individuals and among groups of people. Systemic healing entails structural changes throughout all sectors of society.
Why: I want my people to feel seen, validated, and affirmed. I want my people to experience less pain and more love and joy. I want to reduce the presence and the impact of colorism in the world. I want to build more equity and justice for dark-skinned people.
How: I take a global, cross-cultural, intersectional approach to colorism. This is largely influenced by my very early days of blogging when the people who reached out to me were not other African Americans. My earliest conversations, when I was first understanding colorism and first starting to research and study it, were with people of other ethnicities.
I believe there’s a difference between centering dark-skinned Black women and focusing exclusively on dark-skinned Black women. But even in my centering, I prioritize African American women specifically because our experiences are related but still unique among the diaspora.
The last thing I’ll say about my how is that I put myself out there (on the line). My name and my face have been attached to my work from the very beginning. This is important to me because the visual rhetoric of myself speaks just as powerfully as my writing and speech. I want dark-skinned girls and really the whole world to see women who look like me. I want them to see me being unafraid to be seen.