Yeah I have—now that I think about it, my “type” has a certain look and skin complexion. and majority of the men I’ve dated meet that look and complexion.
I don’t know if it’s colorism though since technically the men are within my shade group.
I have dated a couple of Brehs that weren’t of that complexion though, and they were the ones who talked the most shyt about darker woman (and I’ve known a lot of dark skin women who only dated light skinned dudes). I don’t get how you can be darkskin yourself but practice colorism against your dark counterpart. When I hear dark men/dark women doing it on some “I don’t fukk with dark skin women/dark skin men” (because I’m going to keep it buck I’ve noticed these kinds of things being expressed by dark skinned women and men) i always give them the side eye, like your dark yourself..
i also notice my dark skin girlfriend’s talk about color the most too. Like always. And it’s something that I just realized the other day—that they bring it up a lot, the same way my grandma did (who was dark skinned too) when I was growing up.
I think it truly is the result of trauma—how they were treated, teased, etc growing up. They’ve all told me stories—it wasn’t just coming from men either, it came from the women in their family too.
I’ve said this before but there are so many adults walking around with issues from their childhood, not even aware of how much those experiences shape their thinking, and perception and how they feel scout themselves even as adults. In our community, we tend to pretend that mental illness, anxiety, depression, traumas and experiences are things we just need get over it… so they just push that shyt aside and keep on going, never really confronting and addressing that issue.
But situations keep coming up that bring it right back up/triggering it and it still effects us negatively—until we do the inner work to work that shyt out.