CNN –
The recent debate over Beyoncé’s performance at the premiere of her new film in Los Angeles has made one thing clear: even a cultural icon cannot escape the legacy of racism and colorism in America.
The superstar nearly broke the internet this week when pictures emerged of the singer in a silver dress, with platinum hair and what many perceived as lighter skin tone.
And while Queen Bey wakes up flawless — and her appearance may have been enhanced by the lighting used at the event — this look didn’t go over well with some black people.
The criticism, mostly heard in posts on Instagram, ranged from people accusing Beyoncé of bleaching her skin to others assuming she opted for pale makeup and lighting to look like one to look like a white woman.
“Where did her melanin go?” wrote one Instagram user under a post from popular gossip account The Shade Room.
“I don’t like how they lightened her skin. Beyoncé is a black woman,” another user wrote.
The backlash prompted Tina Knowles to defend her daughter, calling critics’ statements “stupid,” “ignorant,” self-hating and racist.
“She’s making a movie called ‘Renaissance’ where the whole theme is silver with silver hair, a silver carpet and suggested silver clothing, and you idiots come to the conclusion that she’s trying to be a white woman and bleaching her skin ?” Knowles wrote in the caption of an Instagram post that has since gone viral.
In the post, the singer’s mother included a slideshow of her daughter through the years, accompanied by her song “Brown Skin Girl,” a lyrical ode to the strength and beauty of black women.
But Geneva Thomas, a New York-based media executive and A long-time Beyoncé fan, she said she found the singer’s performance shocking precisely because her music is based on celebrating black culture and the empowerment of black women.
“Their music is uncompromising, borderless and globally black,” Thomas said. “And she receives sovereignty over her body and the way she presents it to the world, but we as humans also receive a reaction to that presentation.”
Thomas said it’s traumatic and frustrating for some black women who have spent their lives watching how Eurocentric beauty standards – like lighter skin and long, flowing hair – appear to be celebrated more than black people’s physical characteristics.
And these pictures of Beyoncé, she said, were “an extremely pale presentation.”
“We still struggle with beauty standards that are still rooted in white supremacy,” Thomas said. “Black women still struggle with and are constantly confronted with not being enough.”
JeffriAnne Wilder, author of “Color Stories: Black Women and Colorism in the 21st Century,” said the controversy surrounding Beyoncé’s performance shows that the black community still hasn’t fully come to terms with the issue of colorism.
Colorism is when people of the same racial group show prejudice against people with darker skin tones.
The origins of colorism lie in the white supremacy system, which equates a lighter skin tone with more privilege, Wilder said. During slavery, white slave owners often showed favoritism toward enslaved Africans with lighter skin by forcing them to work around the house instead of toiling in the fields. In many cases, light-skinned slaves were the result of sexual violence by white men against enslaved black women.
Over time, this hierarchy of skin color created divisions among Black people, and the internalized discrimination left deep psychological and emotional scars that lasted for generations.
In the early 20th century, many black organizations on college campuses used a “brown paper bag test” to determine whether a person’s skin was light enough to join their group.
Lighter-skinned black women were often referred to as “redbones,” a term that for some undermined their black heritage by implying that the women were of mixed non-black ancestry.
“It shows that we have this unresolved, unresolved problem with race politics in black America,” Wilder said.
Studies show that colorism is still perpetuated today by people outside of the black community.
A 2023 survey by the nonprofit Catalyst found that women with darker skin tones are more likely to experience racism in the workplace than women with lighter skin. Darker skin is also associated with harsher prison sentences, according to a study published in the University of Chicago Press Journals.
Beyoncé isn’t the first black celebrity to be criticized for appearing lighter in pictures. Wilder noted that in 2013, singer India Arie was accused of lightening her skin on the cover photo of her single “Cocoa Butter.”
Arie later posted on social media confirming previous reports that the look was due to the flash and camera angle.
Still, the image was surprising to fans and some black women because Arie, like Beyoncé, had previously made songs praising the natural beauty of black people, including “Brown Skin” and “I Am Not My Hair.”
Kevin Mazur/WireImage/Getty Images
Beyoncé performs on stage during the ‘RENAISSANCE WORLD TOUR’ at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on May 30, 2023 in London, England.
In her Instagram post defending her daughter, Tina Knowles noted that she was particularly frustrated with members of the black community who continued to promote colorism and other racist stereotypes.
“How sad it is that some of their own people are perpetuating the stupid narrative with hatred and jealousy,” Knowles wrote. “Jealousy and racism, sexism, double standards, you perpetuate these things.”
Other celebrities joined the superstar’s defense, including Oscar-winning actress Octavia Spencer, who wrote: “They raised beautiful, strong, intelligent Black women who are proud to be Black women. Period. Anyone who says otherwise has their own problems. I’m sorry you encountered negative comments that people don’t realize reflect how they think about themselves.”
But Thomas told her the criticism wasn’t about jealousy of Beyoncé. In fact, Thomas described himself as a member of the “Beyhive” who took part in the Renaissance tour this summer and plans to see the concert film in theaters.
However, Thomas said she can still hold Beyoncé accountable for the image she portrays to the black community.
“I can also be critical of Beyoncé,” Thomas said. “We love her, but she’s not above reproach.”
As fans flock to theaters this weekend for the premiere of “Renaissance: A Beyoncé Movie,” Wilder said this recent debate over the singer’s performance shows that the Black community needs to have deeper discussions about the root cause of colorism.
Until that happens, it will continue to be a sensitive issue, she said.
“It’s highly sensitive,” Wilder said. “It has caused great suffering to many people for generations. It has caused divisions in families.”