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Jackie Christie Weighs In On Daughters' Difference In Skin Color and Self Esteem

Source: Maury Phillips/Getty Images

Jackie Christie and her husband Doug were recently asked by Carlton Jordan to weigh in on the overwrought “light skin vs. dark skin” argument. As Doug is half-white, Jackie says their kids “run the gamut” when it comes to color, but each handles it differently.

On their two daughters’ difference in skin color:

I know a lot dark-skinned girls that have major issues with their skin tone, and I feel unfortunate for them because I think it’s a beautiful color. Dark skin is gorgeous and beautiful. Me and my husband have talked about that before and we have a daughter [Chantel] that’s very light-skinned, very fair or pale-skinned, so in our family it kind of goes across the gamut and Doug has white in his family. And when I met him, people were like, ‘Oh my God, you’re going to be with a white boy!’”

But you know, it’s funny, a lot of African-American girls already, as a black people, we feel we’re being oppressed – which we are, we’re not equal yet by any means – so by them being a darker skin, they feel like, ‘Oh my God, it’s even worse for me. And we have a dark-skinned daughter [Ta’kari from Jackie’s previous relationship] that’s a little older and she fights with that self-esteem issue a lot, too. And she’s very pretty, but she still feels like, ‘Why did I have to be born dark?’ I tell her, ‘You’re beautiful. You have caramel skin, you know it’s a darker tone, and it’s gorgeous. You can wear whites, and baby blues, and lime greens, and it looks stunning. So don’t worry about that.’

On what she contributes to self-image issues:

I think the TV, magazines. You always see the light-skinned or the mixed ethnicities on TV, in commercials. They’re always made out to be beautiful and a lot of the celebrities that make it to the top are always fair-skinned or light. That’s why I like the Jennifer Hudsons and all of those people, and Kelly Rowlands and stuff, that’s showing it doesn’t matter. It’s just the pigment of your skin, and that’s it.

Do you agree with Jackie? Can we blame the media?

And can someone PLEASE tell her it’s not “skin-ded”?

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