‘Light Girls’: Raven Symone, Soledad O’Brien, Wayne Brady, LisaRaye McCoy Talk Complexion in America [VIDEO]

want to play with me either…so. I was basically an outcast. I was told that I was a mutt. It was really difficult.

Tatyana Ali:

Being able to categorize you or categorize a person you can assign all of your preconceived ideas about who this person is, what type of person they are, what kind of behavior you can expect from them.

Dr. Gabriel Crenshaw:

You’re too dark to be white, too light to be black. So here you are right in the middle and nobody wants to be associated with a misfit. So you see the magazines and the television commercials and you don’t see yourself…when the very essence of who you are is ignored, degraded, you feel invisible.

Raven Symone:

I think when people are judging children by the color of their skin these people are ignorant.

Issues with skin “leave scars on the soul that live well into womanhood.

Essence Atkins:

I suffered and felt a lot of shame about being light and having long hair.

Chante’ Moore:

We are not taught to value one another.

Brook Bello:

We are missing the mark!

Shamoney Allen:

Light skin is more of a trophy.

Dallas Austin:

Its not about color but the black attitude.

Claudia Jordan:

I have preferred treatment by black men for being light skinned.

Wayne Brady:

As she becomes a woman (black girl) she will never be enough.

Iyanla Vanzant:

No man wealthy, no man handsome, no man educated would not want me because I was not a trophy (dark skinned).

See more clips from the documentary.

Dr. Steve Perry: “My experience with colorism first starts in middle school. Because they are dealing with their own issues of self esteem one of the easiest marks is a person’s color.”

-@divinelyinventive