Okay, one thing we really need to fix is Venezuela's own brand of racism (I know, solving racism, as if it were so easy. Bear with me).
Because Chávez and Maduro's government used any sort of liberal words as a political tool, but never focused on actually educating the population beyond yelling at them, the people who were already racist in Venezuela have gone to... Well, still be racist.
Before we start, we gotta remember that Venezuela skintones are very varied:
This image was taken in Venezuela, and I know that because I'm the whitest arm. It was taken by my classmates at around 2009, who had spent months trying to plan how to take this picture.
In this picture it goes: Me, classmate 1, classmate 2, child we found while doing social work 1, classmate 3, child we found while doing social work 2. Now, the most common skintones in Venezuela are going to go from Classmate 1 to between Classmate 3. Anything me and whiter, and anything Child 2 and darker... That's not the norm, and I can prove it because 1) it took a long time to find someone as dark as child 2, and 2) I was always cast as the white arm, the European that got deposed by the Independentists, the European Magi...
This is more like colorism than anything else, because Venezuela's racial makeup kind of a lottery. Any of these people have/probably have a sibling that's lighter or darker than them, with different features and the like. That's just how it is. It has roots in colonialism yadda yadda, let's not go into that right now.
But on TV, you're going to see skintones from Classmate 1 to Child 1. These are considered "pretty" and "acceptable" and may I even say "more Venezuelan". If you are any of these skintones, or darker, and your eyes are light (from light brown to green/blue), you have it made. People are going to be incredibly creepy while describing you, but you have it made. Remember how I said people creamed their pants over Oscar Pérez? Yeah, this was the reason.
This is Gledys Ibarra, a famous actress. Yes that's her actual hair. And skin. And eyes.
Oh, but this hair? No, no, no, no. Venezuela hates curly/kinky hair, and she actually didn't get cast as the beautiful lead. She is known for Por Estas Calles, a Soap Opera about people in a slum. So... Yeah. Yikes.
These are the leads for the most popular Venezuelan novels from 1998 and 1999.
And this is a 90s children's creature named Juana La Iguana. I still don't understand why they needed so many blonde children for this, when there was only one full, natural blonde in my classroom in real life, and she stuck out like a sore thumb in the seas of black and brown hair. Later on, the two full blondes in my design school cohort got together in a match made in Hitler, before he got a stroke, and she cheated on him and dumped him, not sure if it was all at the same time or there was time between these events. And then he got together with a teacher... And she cheated on him too, before dumping him and emigrating to Miami. Anyways. Usually, the people who have my skintone and up are thought of as being recent migrants (European grandparents, 1950s, you get the gist) and they either get the creepy comments or they get "you should tan" "but I get freckles" "you gotta tan" "I burst into flames" "tan!" "I am a lump of coal" "Taaaan more!! "
But what happens to children who are darker than the normal? Well, I can tell you the story of Classmate 3. Let's call her Cecelia.
Cecelia was bullied relentlessly through primary school (late 90s-early 2000s). The other children, one of which was considered pretty because, skinwise, she was between classmate 1 and me, with brown eyes and a Chihuahua attitude, said she was dirty, and monkey-like, and didn't want to play with her. And she wasn't the only person doing this in our classroom, but the funny thing is that the other girl doing this was the same color as Classmate 2, or a bit darker, because... Again, colourism. This other girl did calm down and became less rscist later, but chuhuahua girl never stopped being a yapping ass. I didn't know this at the time, but the way Cecelia was treated was a big reason why she would prefer to do group work with me. You see, I used to hit (or tried to hit) chihuahua girl because she annoyed me, and I did it with other people too, but thinking about her still makes my blood boil. She was a goddamn bitch. But I never hit Cecelia. I think it's because she was a social Oddysseus and I was, socially, the cyclops. And I enjoyed working with her because of her wit, her perfectionism, and her ethic... I actually did group work with her on and off, until we graduated high school in 2010.
But because she was so smart, Cecelia knew she was at a disadvantage with her peers who weren't autistic. Other people told me that, playing Bratz, she always tried to pick the blonde one. And although she was gorgeous, she used to be on a Facebook group called something like "We're ugly."
Cecelia's story does have a bit of a happy ending: she has a young daughter now, who looks just like Cecelia did, and her birthday party was Little Mermaid themed. The little girl was dressed like the new Ariel. I don't know if Cecelia has healed, but at least her daughter has more role models to choose from.
Anyway, this is my rambling of the day.
