I'm dark-skinned. When I'm around black people, I'm made to feel 'other' because I'm dark-skinned. I've had to wrestle with that, with people going, 'You're too black.' Then I come to America, and they say, 'You're not black enough.'
We're all complaining about diversity in Hollywood, but we've got to address the colorism within the black community of Hollywood first.
Colorism is unfortunately still an issue today.
I'd like to see a day when we're less obsessed with stars and give due credit to everyone who is involved in the process of filmmaking and a change in the obsession with fair skin.
I feel that to a great extent, the industry is fixated with fair skin, and that needs to change.
Light-skinned black people are seen to be closer to white people. The allegiance to lighter-skinned people has operated in a very destructive way that we have internalized ourselves inside black communities. You look at many of the prominent black people in this society who have been able to do well. Many have been lighter-skinned.
It's assumed that light-skinned women have no problems or issues, but they are judged before you know who they are.
Barack Obama would not be President if he were dark skin. You know what I mean? That's just the truth. I might not be as successful as I am now if I was dark skin.
With my social media posts on fairness creams, I felt really strongly that I needed to speak up about it because I think we can take baby steps. Colour and caste is engrained in our culture, but I don't think it should be applauded or packaged and sold.
I agree that lighter-skinned women get favored in Hollywood, and I'm not proud to say that.
I began to realize that this idea of the lighter the better and the darker the worse was really - had an impact on sororities, on friendships, on all sorts of things, and it was stunning to me.
My complexion, we too gutter: light-skinned women are more sensitive.
Basically, when I went to school in Sri Lanka from age five onward, the classes there were sometimes sorted into a hierarchy of your skin tone. So the fairer-skinned kids sat at the front row, and the darker-skinned kids sat at the back by the poor ones who played out in the street all day long.
Colorism is not a good thing, especially when you're Black.
Americans have their issues with skin colour, even within the black community, with light and dark skin; it's crazy - but no one's oblivious to it.
Where I grew up, we had light-skinned models but not dark. Every time I would talk about being a model with my friends, they would start laughing out loud.
