It seems there is no escaping this colorism issue. It is so unspoken yet it is very effective.

Although I cannot relate to what it is like to live in a country that is majority black, I believe I can sight similarities to my experience in an all black community and attending an all black schools.

Spike Lee's 1988 'School Daze' was one of the first times I recall the issue being brought up so directly. And I also recall friends mentioning how ugly the 'jigaboos' (dark females) were and how pretty the 'wannabes' (light females) were. I remember comments such as "the wannabes were regular black girls" but the jigaboos were just that, jigaboos...black, nappy headed, short-haired spooks.

Now I can also remember having a sense of privilege by NOT being dark and also feeling that those who were darker would have to just deal with it. Too bad but both their parents were jigaboos and that's how the cookie crumbles...I was blessed with "good" genes...see, black is beautiful, but not that doggone black. Plus, all the winners of the 'black' beauty pageants were lighter and had longer hair so the mindset was reinforced.

It was the accepted/internalization superiority of whiteness and light was as close as you could come to it.

Light supremacy/privilege is definitely something that we are engrained with but we are also in extreme denial about it.

From girls that were considered more attractive, to characters on television, to even the history books when studying DuBois and Garvey, it is a microcosmic racist implementation in the form of a self-maintained caste system.

I am still trying to figure out if light-complexion supremacy is more or less impactful than male supremacy. Although male supremacy is at least manifested from the physical strength and aggressions of males in general, there is absolutely no natural basis whatsoever for light-skin supremacy.

It is but a shadow of white supremacy that serves as its default enforcer. And from what I can assume, that is what you seem to experience in the Caribbean.

Is it your stance that colorism is the most impactful of all of our internal issues?