Amid Furor, DJ Cancels Party for ‘Light-Skinned’ Blacks

A local DJ and party promoter retreated Thursday from a plan to sponsor a bash that would let “light-skinned” black women into a downtown club for free.

But the “Light Skin Libra Birthday Bash” at Club APT on Woodward Avenue turned out to be a bashing—of promoter Ulysses “DJ Lish” Barnes after word of the unusual party spread on the Internet.

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“I didn’t mean to offend anyone,” he said. “I had planned a party for other shades (of black women). We were going to take a shade of color each week. Next week was going to be a party for ‘Sexy Chocolate’ and the week after that ‘Sexy Caramel.’”

Barnes is African-American and describes himself as “dark skinned.” The issue of skin color is an often painful and emotional among African-Americans. The history of slavery and the resulting legacy of intra-racial segregation have sometimes pitted darker-skinned and lighter-skinned blacks against one another.

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“I had a good conversion with him and he understood,” said Pearl Jr., founder of the Black Women’s Movement in Los Angeles and the author of the book “Black Women Need Love, Too.”

“Ignorance can’t always be an excuse,” she said. “Colorism is real in the black community. It’s especially very degrading to dark-skinned black women.”

The party’s discriminating tone harkens to the day of the “brown paper bag test,” which compared the complexions of blacks to a brown grocery bag before they could be admitted to social clubs and affairs, said Pearl Jr.

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“He was basically falling in line with what we have been taught (by society) that the less African-looking you are the better you are,” said Pearl Jr. “Basing whether someone is admitted on their skin color is discriminatory, which is really against the law.”

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“The way this should be handled is that our light-skinned sisters should refuse to go unless the darker-skinned sisters received the same treatment,” wrote one blogger. “We must stand together and not allow ANYONE, especially, a club to divide us.”

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