Black people are beautiful. We are beautiful. Yet, many of us do not always feel this way and some of us do not even believe this is true. While there are many reasons a person might not feel good about themselves, for Black people, the damaging beliefs about self are often connected in some way to the negative, racist, and stereotyped messages they receive about their Blackness. We have created anti-racist educational resources to both counter these messages and promote healing from the psychological and social harms, pains and wounds that come from internalising messages of Black inferiority. Learn more !

The beauty of Blackness and Black culture is widely embraced in the African diaspora, evidenced today through Black art and activism. Yet, the belief that Black is less, a notion perpetuated by Eurocentric discourse, haunts the Black people in many ways. In fact, across Europe, evidence of this belief pervades nearly all aspects of society. For example, the racially prejudiced depiction of Blackness is found throughout Eurocentric culture in everything from art and education, to music and literature. Think about how the media depict Black people as uneducated, criminal, unskilled. While the nature of this depiction varies across European society, the messages of inferiority behind it does not.

Blackness is still viewed as less beautiful not only in relation to physical beauty, but also in terms of intellectual capacity. And hence, these anti-Black messages have a detrimental impact on the psychological wellbeing of Black people as a community. Beyond the negative impacts of racism in itself, internalising these anti-Black messaging contributes to poor outcomes in the Black community as it relates to education, health, and socioeconomic status. But the white people influenced by racist views, whether consciously or unconsciously, attribute the negative conditions that affect quality of life for the Black people to personal failings, a lack of ambition, low intelligence, or deficits in the Black identity.