Olivia Sang is a Kenyan native who is speaking out bravely against colorism. Her career started out when she was hand-picked to model a clothing line in South Africa. The beautiful dark-skinned beauty humbly admits that she had no idea she would be on billboards and store windows until she saw photos of herself.
In this 1-minute, BBC Africa clip, she reveals that she was incessantly teased about her skin tone growing up in Kenya. She also states that although her skin tone has worked to her advantage in her modeling career, on a grand scale, colourism can still pose a limiting factor and arouse prejudice.
Even for us as Africans, we need to begin to unlearn certain bad habits such as teasing people about their skin tone especially where they have darker hues; we think it doesn’t stick with them for elongated periods of time but it does. Our children should also be discouraged to follow in that pattern of colourism as it really does begin in schools and playgrounds. Can we begin to see beauty in everyone and perpetrate less hate?
“All Black is beautiful,” Olivia says, and we totally agree.
Watch the full clip below:
Photo/Video Credit: Youtube | Boss models | BBC News
