We need to talk about yellow-bones

We need to talk about term and the insidious casualness with which is it is bandied about, writes Gail Smith

I’m often horrified by the casual expressions of prejudice uttered as part of the parlance of everyday life in South Africa. As a feminist born into Apartheid my high-horse is rapidly untethered by those sneaky little phrases that have become the new short-hand for race. 

Words such as ‘crime’ - which has become an inevitable and socially acceptable segue into a codified conversation reeking in race, but where race itself is never mentioned. Apartheid was a crime against humanity - and that the roots of crime were buried deep in the political-economy, in the social and political fabric of society, and in the privileges that bolstered white supremacy. White supremacy and privilege were inherently violent and relied on violence to maintain the status quo.  

‘Yellow bone’ - a deeply offensive term, reverberating with white supremacy - is one of those cool, hip phrases that have entered everyday language. And is, I assume, meant to be received as tongue-in-cheek, as humorous and perhaps even, as ironic. 

As a caramel-coloured Black woman, I know the perks, privileges and benefits of fair-skin privilege. I’ve had a life-time of being seen by eyes willfully blind to the darker woman to my side. As a ‘yellow-bone’ with ‘front-office appearance’ I undoubtedly had an edge over darker-skinned applicants.  

It is fashionable in SA today to eschew all knowledge of privilege, to deny the myriad ways in which white-skin privilege continues to grease the wheels of access and entitlements. As a Coloured South African I know the structural, institutional and legal benefits allocated according to the racial caste system that valorised whiteness. I have benefited from them. And I continue to do so.

I know full well why our Constitution recognises both race and colour as distinct categories of past prejudice, past privilege, and that require specific protection. 

‘Yellow bone’ - used so widely and freely is tragically ironic. That a country so obsessed with race - as it should be. considering our history - also seems totally oblivious to the fact that colourism is as offensive, hurtful and out of step with the values of our constitutional democracy as racism. 

Apartheid - and Segregation, the pernicious and destructive British colonial policy that preceded it - were both built on the indisputability of white supremacy. 

The British built the race-caste system. The Afrikaners perfected it. 

Both British and Afrikaner positioned whiteness at the top of the hierarchy and created a cascading caste system of entitlements based on one’s proximity to whiteness. Entrenching colour - the whiter the better - as a significant aspect of human identity, second only to race and gender. 

Black men, the ‘muscular machines’ critical to white male exploitation of the deepest gold deposits the world have ever seen, were highly prized by white supremacists.  

Black women, not so much. 

Black women were regarded as the ‘extraneous baggage’ of the highly-prized black ‘mine-boy’ and irrelevant to the white-supremacist economy - except as beasts of burden intended to draw migrant workers ‘home’. Black women were relegated to the bottom of the heap, not only of the race hierarchy, but of the colour hierarchy too. 

Fair-skinned black women, with possibilities of ‘passing’ for Coloured or White, could - and often did - exploit an unintended accident of birth to claw their way out of the bottom. 

Black-skinned black women, with little value to a political-economy built entirely on white supremacy, privilege and entitlements fell down the fault-lines of both race and colour prejudice. 

Prejudice that was cemented into legislation, policy, and every day practise. Disparaging and diminishing human beings because of their black skins was socially acceptable. 

Colourism was not simply some irrational historical trend. Colourism, like racism, was cemented into the Constitutions drafted by the British overlords of the Union of South Africa and by the Afrikaner overlords who replaced them at the helm of the Republic of South Africa. 

Colourism, like racism, dictated the trajectory of millions of peoples’ lives and destined them to untold misery and hardship. For generations, millions of black women placed their hopes of attaining whiteness - and a passport to a life of incremental privilege - in a tubes of skin lightener. And millions bore the scars of shame of skins irrevocably damaged and blackened further by hydroquinone. 

We need to talk about ‘yellow bones’ and the social, political and economic roots of this egregious relic of white supremacy. We need to talk about ‘yellow bones’ and the casual acceptance of a term steeped in white-skin privilege and preference. We need to talk about colourism as much as we talk about its twin, racism. 

Racism is violent. Colourism is violent. Racism and colourism both violate the three founding principles of the Constitution: Equality, Dignity, and Freedom. 

The Constitution of the Democratic Republic of South Africa was described by Nobel laureate, Nadine Gordimer as “the collective morality of the nation”. 

Our Constitution - “the collective morality of our nation” - is not a piece of parchment written hundreds of years ago by dead, white men. It is a document that upholds the values of the nation that seeks to rise above the morally repugnant white supremacist ‘South Africas’ that preceded this one. 

Our Constitution is a document written for the people, by the people, it prizes human dignity as a real value. It is a document that specifically identifies ‘colour’ alongside’ race’ as part of the ugly legacy of the ‘South Africas’ of Segregation and Apartheid which we seek never to replicate.

Colourism, the expression of preference for a particular skin colour, is an affront to the human dignity of a person and is a violation of the “collective morality of our nation”. Colourism violates the most profound social contract of our country: that the legalised white supremacy was a crime against humanity and must never again become a standard of how human beings are valued.

We need to talk about yellow bones. And the insidious casualness with which is it is bandied about. As if, by dint of being catchy and trendy and pervasive, it has been expunged of its divisive, destructive and dehumanising past. As if the term hangs suspended, disconnected, from an ugly, painful history. 

As if ‘yellow bones’ is not implicated in the daily humiliations and assaults on the self-esteem of millions of black women. As if it does not resonate with decades of institutional violence inflicted on women who did not ‘make the colour grade’; as if it was not a perverted form of gender-based violence perpetrated against millions of women for generations.  

Yellow bone is a term reserved for women, in the main. It speaks to the acceptability of an old caste system with deeply gendered implications.

‘Yellow bone’ is neither funny, nor ironic. Jokes are not funny when only the one favoured by white supremacy is laughing. 

Yellow bone is an insult to the memory of millions of black women denied the privileges of human dignity due to an inherent, unchosen, and deeply personal part of their identity: the colour of their skin.  And it is an insult to millions of dark-skinned women (and men) who should be judged by the content of their character, not by the colour of their skin. 

Gail Smith is a feminist writer and journalist, she is spokesperson for the Soul City Institute for Social Justice, an intersectional feminist organisation.