Jada, Willow And Gam Share Personal Experiences With Colorism On Red Table Talk

“Red Table Talk” returned on Wednesday for an episode about colorism, filmed before the coronavirus pandemic.

Throughout the half hour Facebook Watch show, hosts Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith and Adrienne Banfield Norris shared their personal experiences with the issue, both as victims and as witnesses to their own family perpetuating the problem.

Colorism is discrimination or prejudice based on skin tone, from members of the same race. While the trio welcomed darker-skinned black women onto the show to open up about how colorism has negatively affected them, the Smith family shared their experience on the flip side.

“I had the opposite in my experience, being picked on for being light-skinned,” explained Jada, who said her mother would tell her not to reveal anything else about her heritage except to say she was black growing up.

“Back in the day, you would always hear black people like, ‘I got Indian in me,’ still not owning our own blackness and that’s just a result of all the brainwashing that has happened over the years and the perpetuation of white supremacy,” said Adrienne.

Speaking with their guests, Jada said they “all have issues with color, no matter what side you’re on.” As a light-skinned black woman, she said she’d still be asked to “have your hair super straight” or would be told to not cut her hair for magazine shoots.

Hair was “one of the issues growing up” for Willow as well, calling it “just a struggle” for her. “My cousins and my friends, I would look at her hair and be like, ‘I would be so much prettier if my hair wasn’t so kinky or if I had longer hair,'” she explained.

“The approximation to white is what’s valued around the world,” added Gam. “Back in the day, if you were light-skinned and long hair, you would get bank for no reason. Just think about how superficial that is.”

Adrienne then revealed that her own grandparents were prejudiced when they were growing up.

“My grandmother, they were from Barbados and she definitely did not like dark-skinned people,” she explained. “I remember when I was very little, we had neighbors who were very, very dark and she didn’t want us to play with them.”

The women welcomed Jada’s lifelong friend Mia and her daughter Madison on to the show to share their experiences — as well as a Haitian woman who used to bleach her skin. Watch the full episode below.