It was only outside the comforts of home that the world began to challenge those ideals. I remember the sense of belonging, having nothing to do with the color of my skin. There were the three of us, a family tree in an ombré of mocha next to the caramel complexion of my mom and light-skinned, freckled me. “I have the most vivid memories of being seven years old and my mom picking me up from my grandmother’s house. But most importantly, it can be a source of celebration… Because our skin can be both a vulnerability and a defense. For our April 2017 cover story, Allure asked 41 women of color to tell us the story of their lives through their skin - and skin tone. Our skin is the metaphor that defines how we’re seen - and how we see ourselves. But our skin is so much more than a reflection in the mirror. Right, on Imaan Hammam: Swimsuit by Mikoh. Center, on Aamito Lagum: Swimsuit by Acacia Swimwear. 24.Ĥ1 Women of Color Get REAL About Beauty and Diversity Trina Grillo, “ Anti-Essentialism and Intersectionality: Tools to Dismantle the Master’s House,” Berkeley Women’s Law Journal, (Volume 10, 1995). Experiences, histories, and communities have all developed around this concept so if we abandon race, we abandon communities that may have been initially formed as a result of racism but have become something else entirely. However, the fact that race is an historical and social construct certainly does not mean that it does not exist. If there were such as thing as a biological white, I would be at least half that, and so would many other Blacks. Most Blacks in the United States are persons of “mixed blood,” if such a thing can be said to exist, and have both white and Black ancestors. The reason that I grew up considering myself, as we then said, Negro, is that a racist system described me in that way. To begin with, we must fully understand that race is not a biological concept, but a social and historical construct.

Jeanine downie