Light Bright, High Yellow, Red Bone, Roach, Dirty-Dark. These are all names that many students have heard in both playful and serious tones.

Colorism, according to About.com, is the discrimination against individuals with darker skin, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group.

After the documentary ‘Light Girls’, the counter documentary to ‘Dark Girls’, aired in January on the OWN network, the ongoing debate on colorism become prominent on social media as well as in many schools. The idea of the documentary was to highlight the injustice that individuals of lighter complexions faced. Both movies describe the societal struggles when something like colorism exists, but they both ended on the same note: colorism is a problem that needs to be solved both in black communities as well as in other cultures.

Colorism is also a problem in Indian, Latin American, and Caribbean cultures. In 2014, Nina Davuluri won the title of Miss America. Davuluri, a young woman of India decent, is a role model to young girls in India, and all around the world, who are often self conscious because of their darker skin complexion.

After the airing of the Miss Universe Pageant on January 25, 2015, many people on social media asked if it was fair to have no contestants of darker complexions make it past the first round. It’s not that there were no contestants of African decent, but that all of those contestants were of lighter complexion.

Walk the hallways here at Roosevelt, and students often hear phrases like Your acting so light skin!; She’s pretty for a dark skin girl; You knows she is not going to text back because shes light skin. Such comments can make individuals feel as though they are not good enough, or that being a certain skin complexion is better than another.

“People automatically judge me based on my skin color before they even get to know me” said senior Milan Marshall. “They say I’m bougie, stuck up, ‘think I’m all that’, call me white girl”. Marshall explained that individuals of a lighter skin complexion are judged this way because of the way that society views what beautiful and successful are.

Society plays a big role in how students view others and themselves. When looking at magazine covers and advertisements with diversity, “You mainly see lighter complexion people on TV, Ads and magazines.” said sophomore Simone St. Paul.

This can make darker individuals who may aspire to be in entertainment feel incompetent. Senior Hassan Thomas said he felt media portrayals can be damaging.

Media’s “expectations are not reachable for everyone” he said.

Marshall, a light skin African-American female, explains that people often doubt her ethnicity. “They ask me if my mom is white, I tell them no. The females in my family are all very fair skin. It is very frustrating” people jump to conclusions about what they want me to be.

Another example of colorism in media is in cosmetics and make up. There is not a lot of foundation for women of darker complexions. Foundation is used to give a person a even skin tone. In many color lines there are around seven shades of brown foundation. Subconsciously, people buy into the product with out recognizing the message.

Media attempts to conceal the their bias against individuals of darker complexions, but some people are very open with their opinions.

The casual nature of the light skin vs. dark skin jokes discriminate because of those images and associations with the light skin and dark skin discussion.

Senior Amoni McNeill-Owens said that “Jealousy and the lack of self confidence can really misguide people into taking those stereotypes seriously.”