ON CAPICOSTIA: COLORISM IS RACISM, AND THERE MUST BE NO SAFE SPACE FOR RACISM, ANYWHERE!

by Edgar Miraculous Dyer

COLORISM (complexionism) is RACISM...

And when we - white, tan, olive-skinned, brown-skinned, light-skinned, dark-skinned - act on colorist ideas, we willfully BOW to the status-obsessive pathology that is white supremacist racism. It's a willful, intentional bow - we don't need any help or force or historical victimization to do it. All we need is IGNORANCE and the will to keep it going, with all of us non-whites securely, comfortably at the bottom, ..with no accountability to stop it.

Ever.

Colorism is very powerful in America, among a broad, diverse array of ethnic groups, because we make it powerful and impactful. Latino people, Asian people, white and European people, black or African people and Arab people. We all do it.

We cannot be too Latino, Asian, white, black, Arab, mixed race, light-skinned or rich to recognize racism, when we see it.

As I see it, colorism is the idea that one skin color or likeness to a race (looking a little white or Spanish, or looking black enough, etc), ..is better than another skin color and likeness to another race. In polite conversation, when it comes up in a lecture hall or a dinner table, all of us well-intentioned, sensible people typically say that we HATE colorism. We assure each other that it is wasteful, stupid and outdated. "Why do we do that to each other? It's so wrong," we say. I cannot help but ask, why then, do we keep something going...keep feeding something that we profess to hate.

I don't believe that...that we truly hate it.

I think we hate it, right up until we find something to do with it, ..again. We hate colorism, right up until we can USE it to exclude someone from prized, status-assigning experiences, like feeling safe or comfortable in a group, ..or from resources, like education or money. We hate it, until we can use it to keep other people from good stuff that we don't think they deserve. We hate colorism, right up until it becomes useful to us...right up until we find some WORK for colorism to do for us.

We use colorism to hurt or shame people, who look like people, who hurt us...settle old scores with people, who don't know what the hell we're doing or what they have to do with it. We use it to lock out some vulnerable people, we think will use or take our share of the good stuff, when we are fearful there won't be enough good stuff to go around, ..and sometimes that works. We find all kinds of work to keep colorism very busy and alive in 2026.

If you are reading this, understand that you are not ignorant about acting on colorism or complexionism, anymore. From this point forward, with this understanding, whatever complexion you are, medium [?], light or dark, ..whenever you act on it, you are participating in it and keeping it going. From here on out, you act on it as a party and help to it...an agent of the same white supremacy that so many decry and condemn.

Do NOT let anyone tell you that there is a WOKE, intellectually safe or politically correct position ..or RACE, from which to identify or condemn colorism, which excludes US, ..because that, in itself, is racist. When we see people acting on the idea that 'looking like' one race entitles us to something better than looking like another race, ..that is colorism, and it is also most certainly racism. We cannot be too foreign, white, mixed race, light or medium brown, light-skinned, rich or anything else to recognize racism - that's race-oriented privilege and exclusion - when we see it. Even when some of us delude ourselves into thinking colorism is a separate, different something that only enlightened, formally educated or woke individuals can understand, ..we, all of us, must understand that it is not.

How do we stop colorism in 2026? We just stop it. Stop doing it and blaming our participation in it on something outside of ourselves...outside of our responsibility to stop it. Stop doing it and rationalizing our reason for doing it, because we have none. Let's call it out, when we see, hear or experience it to be the RACISM that it is.

Colorism is racism. Understand that and stop it.

Edgar Miraculous (Mel) Dyer, Capicostia's publisher, without his fine, coyote-hatin' Goldiweiller, Kirby (now moved on to that big, coyote-hatin' hate group in the Sky) continues a somewhat bleaker, dogless existence in the Capitol Hill area of Washington, DC. He has been an active member of the Latino Culture Council of the Capitol Area (El Consejo de Cultura Latina – La Zona del Capitolio), the Kiwanis Club of Capitol Hill and the Board of Directors for both Total Care Services, Inc. and YMCA Capital View.