"He is an over-the-top manifestation of that undercurrent in the black community," says Alice M. Thomas, associate professor of law at Howard University. "If you are light, you are all right. If you are brown, you can stick around. If you are black, get back."  Jackson has insisted that his skin faded as the result of vitiligo, a condition that damages the skin's pigment. But experts say that condition leaves the skin spotted and blotchy. To the outer world, Jackson's skin appeared consistently white. And before-and-after photos of Jackson tell a deeper story about color discrimination, also known as colorism -- an intra-racial discrimination among African Americans.  Colorism began during slavery when darker-skinned blacks were relegated to field work and lighter-skinned blacks, often the children of slave masters, were given housework. For years after, many blacks, some say, internalized the declaration that the lighter one was the better one.  Nobody wants to talk about colorism. And yet everybody talks about it.  "Colorism was venomous because it did so much damage to the psyche," says Alvin F. Poussaint, media director at the Judge Baker Children's Center in Boston and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "There was nothing like walking around feeling you are a rejected person, a wretched person, as Frantz Fanon put it in 'The Wretched of the Earth.' "  The attitudes toward dark skin have progressed as a result of discussion and the civil rights movement. But those attitudes have not been completely corrected. They linger in the recesses of human culture. Though circumstances differ, colorism is an issue in countries all around the world: Vietnam, Brazil, India, Japan and Mexico, for instance.
Colorism is the crazy aunt in the attic of racism.It's best not to mention her in polite company. Or if you find it necessary to talk about her at all, do it in whispers among relatives and people...