Race Equality Foundation Says Skin Whitening Cream is Racist

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Obviously it’s racist. Isn’t everything?

Health food giant Holland & Barrett has been attacked by race equality charities for selling a £9.99 cream which claims to make skin whiter.

Jabeer Bhutt, the deputy chief executive of the Race Equality Foundation, has asked Holland & Barrett to remove the cream from its shelves to set an example.

‘In 1930s America, if your skin was lighter than a brown bag you could go through the front door and if it wasn’t you had to go round the back,’ he said. ‘We have moved on since then.’

‘It’s a shock to us that anybody, particularly Holland & Barrett, would make anything like this available.’

Incidentally the paper bag test exists today as an example of colorist racism among black people. It’s not anything that white people are remotely familiar with.

Debbie Weekes-Bernard, of the Runnymede Trust equality think-tank, added it was an ‘insult to generations of work done to encourage darker-skinned people to have pride in their skin’.

Can we still sell suntan lotion or is that also racist toward the reds?

The product’s packaging insists it can be used on age, liver and sun spots, freckles, scars, blemishes, discoloured skin patches and darkened elbows and knees alongside ‘general skin brightening’

We should be teaching people to be proud of their liver spots, freckles and discolored skin patches. It’s time to stop the hate.

  • tagalog

    Just another clarifying moment that highlights the difference between people who consider liberty the highest value and people who consider equality the highest value.

    • CTobias

      To be more accruate:
      The Right attempts to legislate morality; The Left, equality.
      Both are rigid, partisan nonsense and beyond the reach of legislation.

      • tagalog

        Your comment doesn’t serve to make mine more accurate. It’s just another comment, as mine is. I didn’t say a word about Left or Right.

      • laura r

        thats why i am attacked on far right forums as well as far left. somehow they seem like the same people.

    • Roninf9

      The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

      - Aristotle

  • cheri

    And those flesh colored band aids are racist too. Oh, and nude pantyhose. Oh, and so is the game of billards. Oh, and so is the game of chess. Oh, and so is Count Chocula cereal.

  • hawk1

    And who can forget this gem:

    “Being a white person who does anti-racist work is like being an alcoholic. I will never be recovered by my alcoholism… I have to everyday wake up and acknowledge that I am so deeply imbedded with racist thoughts and notions and actions in my body that I have to choose everyday to do anti-racist work and think in an anti-racist way.”

    –Kim Radersma, a former high school English teacher at the annual national White Privilege Conference

    • tagalog

      Radersma can do my atonement too, OK?

    • johninohio1

      It’s too bad that folks of other hues don’t fess up in like manner.

  • roccolore

    Yet no one went after the major company that had a “True Beauty” campaign in the US while selling a skin lightening cream in India.

  • wileyvet

    Let’s not forget White Out, White Light, White Noise, Snow, Snow White, White Bond Paper, The Whites of your Eyes, Whitening Toothpaste, Coffee Whitener, Egg Whites, White Bread, White Flour, The White House, White Picket Fences, Betty White, Slappy White and Barry White. ALL RACIST. Oh the Horror!

    • tagalog

      You forgot the worst thing of all: mayonnaise!

      • cheri

        Uh, mayonnaise IS pretty gross.

        • tagalog

          AND it’s white!

          But what’s a BLT without mayo?

    • cheri

      The term “White” needs to be banned from the American consciousness, as well as an adjective, pronoun and noun. It has perpetrated horrible, horrible things and is no longer valuable or relevant.

      Postum Scriptum: Really liked the whites of your eyes!

      • tagalog

        You raise an interesting point: I wonder how white horrible things stack up against black horrible things. The slave trade in interior Africa, the Hutus and the Tutsis, Biafra, Nigeria, and other places come trippingly to mind.

    • http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/ Edward Cline

      You forgot to mention “White Rabbit,” a euphemism for cocaine. And that famous Bunker Hill command, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!”

    • DVult

      Don’t forget marshmellows! Come to think of it why wasn’t Billy Martin charged with a racist hate crime when he punched out that marshmellow salesman or maybe he was standing up for racial justice and speaking fists to the man?

  • Biff Henderson

    The QWERTY crowd says we must respect the decision of anyone who would snip off and rearrange their bits because imposing limits (no matter what form they may take) on how a person defines themselves is a violation of a basic human right. Thanks to Obamacare, the mental health police line up their tin cups and coin is measured before The Island of Dr, Monroe gets to fiddle in the middle.

    We are now told that the racial identifier of skin color is sacred ground. This particular brand of Identity politics seeks to impose its narrative through a shaming vehicle with a narrowly defined set of parameters that spits in the face of freedom of choice. Bravo.

  • http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/ Edward Cline

    Whiter than white! went the old toothpaste commercials. So, I guess having squeaky clean white teeth is evidence of one’s nascent racism. Don’t people like Jabeer Bhutt have lives to live other than hunting for things to whine about? I guess not. They live to invent race cards.

  • cree

    I’ll take $1000 from Holland and Barrett for the idea for a cream that will enhance any shade of brown so that blacks can be proud of their race instead whining about whites being proud of theirs.

  • Roninf9

    The very existence of Whites and White Civilization is racist. I am racist for pointing out that Whites and White Civilization exist and have a right to exist. I am not being sarcastic. This is at the root of the thinking of the otherside.

    • laura r

      you got it! they want us dead. tell them not to worry, whites are committing their own suicide.

  • johninohio1

    That’s the problem with efficient economies. Too much labor is redundant, and those who can’t find real work try anything they can to make a buck. Or pound. Falling back on the cliche’ of white racism reveals another fault of such people–laziness and a lack of imagination.

  • Pete

    There was a black woman who was posting about a lit of things form making money online legitimately to using facial creams. He complexion was splotchy.So she was using creams like this. She posted the photos. However she gave up on them after reading the ingredients.

    She was not using the creams because she wanted to get lighter or darker. She was using them because as a society we are ‘lookist’ and would tend to shy away form people with splotchy skin.

    Speaking of which when we are talking about discrimination and skin color, what about the movie Boyz n the Hood? The lightest skin female character is made to look dumb, ugly and almost mental. The cast and crew of the movie had no problem with it. So what does that say about racist attitudes in a important segment of the black community? Watch the movie and see if it is not true.

  • Hard Little Machine

    So tanning booths are the Martin Luther King of freedom.

    • Biff Henderson

      “We may have all come on different ships but we’re in the same boat now.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

      Tanning booths are the boats of freedom.

  • laura r

    meanwhile back @ the black ranch, lil kim had a skin bleaching. besides that she had a nose job. she did some other female rappers. tell whoever to mind their own white business. tanning creams still sell, white folks like to be dark.

  • contemptuous Maximus

    Michael Jackson spent who knows how much money trying to make himself white. What a first class racist he was. Where’s Al Sharpton when we need him?

  • objectivefactsmatter

    You know what else is racist? So-called anti-racism.

  • roger

    I am a white Australian with blotchy, freckled and lined skin, but I think that there are other characteristics about me that define me as a person.
    The more attention is drawn to these things, the greater the importance that is put on the difference between various shades of pigmentation.
    This makes for even more division.

  • Aleya

    Lol – theres an advert for Nur76 skin lightening cream on this page! Talk about contextual marketing!