RESOURCES:
University of Michigan School of Social Work
Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
"Colorism: Our Story on Stage"
The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers
TRANSCRIPTION:
Caroline MacGregor: You're listening to 89.1 WEMU. I'm Caroline MacGregor, and my guest today is Professor Rogerio Pinto. He's with the University of Michigan School of Social Work. And today, we're talking about "Colorism," which is the theme of an evening of live storytelling taking place at Detroit's Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Friday, September 19th at 7:30. First of all, Professor Pinto, welcome!
Dr. Rogerio Pinto: Oh, thank you so much for having me, Caroline!
Caroline MacGregor: Tell me about this event that's taking place in Detroit, and then we'll touch on how it relates to Washtenaw County.
Dr. Rogerio Pinto: So, this is an evening of storytelling. I had been working for three years on an exhibit about colorism, and I opened the exhibit on colorism in February of this year. And it went on for the whole month in the University of Michigan. And so, the storytelling event is, in many ways, a follow-up or a segue from the exhibit. The exhibit explored colorism from a historical perspective, from an anthropological perspective, and also a sociological perspective. And one of the major pieces of the exhibit, it's an art exhibit, I interviewed 10 people asking them how they observed colorism in their lives. What were the consequences of colorism in their life? And I think it's important to define what colorism is. For me, colorism is racism that could happen within the same groups of people, so racism among Black people or racism among Brazilians who might be people of color. So, that's what colorism is.
Caroline MacGregor: Are you talking about racism toward each other in addition to?
Dr. Rogerio Pinto: In addition to, yes. So, Alice Walker actually is the person who came up with the term colorism as a way, and that's how she defines it, as racism within the same racial or ethnic group. But I see colorism as also racism across people of different groups, racial and ethnic groups as well. So, my exhibit explores colorism from this much more ample view that I just described. And as I was interviewing people so that I could have a conversation with them and improve my own understanding of colorism, I was extremely touched by the stories that they told me. And I decided that I would find a venue to have our stories being told together. And so, I got in touch with Satori Shakoor, who founded the Society for Twisted Storytellers. It's an organization, a non-profit in Detroit, and they have been doing this for nearly a decade. And they produce about like five, maybe sometimes six shows every year. So, the Colorism show that is taking place on September 19th at the Wright Museum, the Museum of African American History, is part of the Twisted Society of Storytellers series. And we are taking one of those slides to talk about colorism.
Caroline MacGregor: I have to say I'm intrigued and I kind of love the name Detroit Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers. How did this title come about? Do you know?
Dr. Rogerio Pinto: I don't know the entire history of it, but I think what I know from the founder, Satori Shakoor, is that sometimes in her way of thinking of storytelling and how she coaxed people to tell stories, is stories that are interesting always have a little bit of a twist. You know, they start in a particular way, and then they have a twist. It's not a twist in like in a bad sense. It's just like starting a story and then having a little twist and you move to something else to make it more interesting, but it keeps moving straightforward. And I think that's a secret because a lot of storytelling that has meaning, and certainly the ones that will be told on September 19th for the Colorism event, there are things in our lives that we sometimes keep a secret. And it started with the telling that provides the venue and the opportunity to say things that otherwise we may not say when we feel safe in front of an audience that is cheering us up to say what it is we need to say. So, I think it's a secret in that sense.
Caroline MacGregor: If you're just tuning in, I'm speaking with Professor Rogerio Pinto, and we're talking about colorism and an evening of art and discussion that's taking place at the Charles H. Wright Museum in Detroit, September 19th at 7:30. A question I have for you is I know that this performance will explore how racial categorizations and colorism have shaped performers' lives and opportunities. Tell me how have colonial histories, scientific classifications and social structures upheld, what I think has been termed, the imagined superiority of light skin and oppressed those with darker skin.
Dr. Rogerio Pinto: Well, I mean, we need to go back to the 17th century when that kind of conversation started in Europe, where biologists created scientific explorations and explanations as to why some races were more or less than others. It is no coincidence that, in the 17th century, we begin to see a classification of human beings into groupings that are white, yellow, red, and black. Those major categories, even when I was growing up in Brazil, were the categories that I learned that people in Asia, China, Korea, and other places were yellow. But then, everybody else from Southeast Asia was not considered because it didn't fit that categorization of yellow, right? Red people were natives across Latin America. So, that kind of classification started in the 17th century and went on for very long to the point where many people that I interviewed and I talked to learned these categories in school as being how people are categorized.
Caroline MacGregor: And I understand what you're saying, but the fact is there are different categories of people. There are Eastern people, white-skinned people, dark-skinned people. Son is it not sort of somewhat of a natural thing to have those classifications? Because we are all different.
Dr. Rogerio Pinto: No. No doubt. The problem that those classifications were being done by white people who created a way of looking at the culture and the intelligence and the contributions of the other races in a way that was very negative. So, the creation of the categories in and of themselves was not necessarily like a horrible thing. It becomes terrible when it doesn't include everybody, right, because there is no such a thing as a catch-all red anything or yellow anything. So, the very idea of creating four categories betrayed the very ideal of biological difference where we have a lot more similarities than natural differences. No matter how different we may look, what constitutes our body and our physiology are very similar things. And my exhibit, I think, by extension the evening of storytelling, is trying to do exactly that. It's to demonstrate that, even though there might be some phenotypical differences between different people, at the end of the day, we have a lot more similarities than we have differences. You know, a person like me who grew up in Brazil from a mixed-race marriage--a mix that I don't even know even today what it is. My mother was white, Portuguese, perhaps some German, but my father was what's called Pardo in Brazil. Pardo is a skin color that stands for a mix of different races and ethnicities. Nobody knew what my father's ethnic mix was. I still don't know because that was not important to me.
Caroline MacGregor: It's great to educate people through performances or in the classroom, but wouldn't you one of the best ways to address this to encourage people to travel, so that they can actually get to know people of different nationalities and to enlighten people about people from different cultures and races?
Dr. Rogerio Pinto: Oh, no doubt about it! I don't think that I'm doing these storytelling events with the purpose of educating or in terms of providing information. It is very clear to me from my studies that people's behaviors and impressions about other people change not so much from having information, especially, currently, where information has been distorted so much. But it is clear to me that, cognitively, we need more than knowledge to change how we feel about things, right, and even to change our behavior. So, I use the arts--visual arts and performance and drama and storytelling--to help people not only understand information, but to change attitudes and to create social norms. And it is, in that exercise of empathy, that I think changes can happen. And so, I'm going for, more than anything here, empathy--creating an opportunity for people to have critical dialog about a very important topic, which is colorism, and out of that dialog to develop some reflection around colorism. That's my hope.
Caroline MacGregor: I've been speaking with Professor Rogerio Pinto. He's with the University of Michigan School of Social Work, and we've been discussing "Colorism," and this is an evening of live storytelling that's taking place at Detroit's Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History on September 19th at 7:30. Thank you for joining me today!
Dr. Rogerio Pinto: It is my pleasure to have been here, Caroline! And I hope that we will do this again!
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