Or there’s a 2018 Beats 1 interview in which mixed-race Jorja Smith expresses the difficulty she has reconciling the notion that she may have benefited from “pretty privilege” in her career with her lived experience of being bullied in a “majority white” school. ‘Pretty privilege has worked all through history’: Jorja Smith.
Beyoncé celebrated this heritage on her track Formation, and while Creoles of colour lost their favourable social status from the early 19th century onwards, a shade-based caste system, with whiteness at its apex, persists to this day. Indeed, Beyoncé descends, via her mother’s line, from Louisiana’s “Creoles of color” or “gens de couleur libres”, a distinct ethnic group in 17th- and 18th-century America, who developed from unions between Europeans and Africans and held privileged positions in society, relative to enslaved Africans. When asked how different Beyoncé’s career would have been had she been darker-skinned, Knowles was unequivocal: “I think it would’ve affected her success.” Their study found that over a 15-year period it was lighter-skinned black women – the likes of Alicia Keys, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Mariah Carey and, of course, Beyoncé – who dominated Top 40 airplay. So it was when Mathew Knowles, record exec, former Destiny’s Child manager and Beyoncé’s father, appeared on SiriusXM radio to discuss research by Texas Southern University, where he is a visiting professor. I t seems every conversation about colourism in pop music must come back to Beyoncé.
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