Never Look At The Sun

Congolese-Belgian filmmaker and rapper Baloji explores the practice of skin bleaching in black communities using the expression "Never look at the sun" and knowing a lot of people who have experience skin bleaching ... not "to reject their Black or African identity but more to decrease the effect of darker skin has in society".

Never look at the sun is an expression I heard growing up,. Never look at the sun and don’t play under it because you're dark enough. It's a way parents try to protect their children, but this has side effects.

::: Watch "Never Look At The Sun": LINK 

The film's protagonist bathes in a fictional lightening product, is covered in withe lace and heavy fabrics, Baloji plays with darkness and light. The film is "a declaration on the beauty of dark skin", the poem is written by Thandi Loewenson and  narrated by Dorrie Wilson, a decolonial thinker.

I know a lot of people who have experienced skin bleaching, It's never done to reject their Black or African identity but more to decrease the effect darker skin has in society. Ancestral patterns combined with modern prejudices and stigma explain skin bleaching. We can’t criticize the practice because it’s rooted in cultural conceptions, interpretations, and questions of self-consciousness. (via)

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