Why are Dark-Skinned Black Women Portrayed so Negatively in the Media

There are more Black actors and actresses in Hollywood today than in any time in media history. Black actors and actresses have more enormous strides in the field of entertainment. More exciting, challenging, and non-race specific roles are available to Black actors and actresses now than in previous history.

However, if one observes very closely, there are very, very few dark-skinned Black actresses that have notable movie and television roles. The minute few dark-skinned Black actresses who have movie and television roles are often cast in the following roles: the asexual superwoman, the thug queen/princess, the long suffering girlfriend/wife, the jolly take it all girl/woman, the sidekick, the angry, embittered girl/woman, the tough, no tears girl/woman, and the put upon girl/woman. If dark skinned Black actresses are casted into atypical roles i.e. roles of glamorous, sexual, and high status women of class, network executives usually remove them to be replaced by lighter-skinned Black actresses who are deemed less threatening and more palatable to the viewing public.

In the Fresh Prince of Bel Aire television series, the character of Vivian Banks was portrayed by Janet Hubert, a dark-skinned Black actress from the 1990-3 seasons. For whatever reason, network executives believed that a dark-skinned Black actress was not right for the role of an upscale housewife of a judge. Ms. Hubert was summarily let go and a lighter-skinned actress(Daphne Maxwell Reid) was hired to replace Ms. Hubert. Ms. Reid was selected for the part as being lighter-skinned was deemed more palatable and a more fitting image of the upscale housewife of a judge.

In the 1991 movie New Jack City, there was a strict dichotomy in the portrayals of characters by Vanessa A. Williams, a dark-skinned Black actress and Michael Michele, a light-skinned Black actress. Ms. Williams was sleighted to portray a character who could be described as a combination of the angry woman and thug princess while Ms. Michele's character was portrayed as the poor little rich girl. In the 2009 movie Notorious, the character portrayed by Julia Pace Mitchell, a dark-skinned Black actress, was the long suffering girlfriend of the title character who had a child by him. Although Biggie's character professed to love Jan's character, he never married her although she had his child. The Biggie's character instead married a lighter-skinned character whom he deemed more suitable.

Dark-skinned Black actresses were also slated to portray somewhat negative roles in the 1988 movie School Daze. While the lighter-skinned Black female characters were portrayed as classy, happy, sexual, and upwardly mobile, the darker-skinned Black female characters were portrayed as angry, embittered, somewhat asexual, and lower class. They were further portrayed in the movie as being somewhat unattractive and being dateless on Friday nights. The only redeeming qualities to their characters were that they had high integrity and highly interested in education and Black culture.

Gabrielle Union, a dark-skinned Black actress, portrayed Eva in the movie Deliver Us From Eva. The character Eva was the asexual superwoman. Although Eva was an upwardly mobile professional, she was portrayed as being domineering and interfering without a boyfriend. However, it was decided by Eva's brothers-in-law that she must have a boyfriend in order to get her out of their lives. The movie portrayed Eva in some of the typical roles for the dark-skinned Black woman-the asexual superwoman who is a domineering shrew. The movie never portrayed Eva's more vulverable side at all.

Ms. Union portrayed another negative character in the 2004 movie Breaking All the Rules in which she played a physical therapist who was slighty psycho(a take on the angry woman) while whlle Briana Lawson, a lighter-skinned Black actress portrayed a take-charge fashion model who dumped one of the film's characters. In the television series Ugly Betty, Ms. Union portrayed an embittered psychotic woman.

Dark-skinned Black actresses seldom, if ever, get the glamorous, sexy, and/or high powered roles than lighter-skinned Black actresses obtain. Dark-skinned Black actresses are often cast into more lower class, brutish, or thuggish roles because network executives believe that this portrayal is more believable to the viewing public. A sociologist did studies on the perception of color skin and the sociologist found that both Blacks and Caucasians perceived lighter-skinned Blacks as cultured, educated, intelligent, attractive, and upwardly mobile while darker-skinned Blacks are perceived more negatively as thugs, lower class, unattractive, dirty, and ghetto. It is time that this perception stop and to recognize the talent of dark-skinned Black actresses and to give them decent roles.