DaniLeigh’s “Apology” Was Trash — This Is How She Could Have Done Better
I’m gonna be writing about an issue that’s important to discuss — colorism.
Specifically, how a song, made by a social media lite known as DaniLeigh, sparked outrage for the public, especially the black community. To be even more specific, I’d like to write this think piece in order to address two things that I believe can be learned from this:
1). To educate people more about the topic of colorism, and
2). How to properly execute an apology.
I actually wanted to leave most of these points under the IGTV video that she posted, however, the post only allowed limited comments. I know what it feels like to make a mistake and to feel like the whole world is against you. I also know that people don’t tend to respond to criticism if you’re just straight-up insulting them, so I’ll also include a few parts where I think she went right. But of course, the meat of this article will be where she missed some opportunities over a very sensitive topic and what I think she could have done to make it better.
Let’s first rewind for a second and give an overview of the situation.
The “Apologies”
DaniLeigh posted an IGTV video this past Sunday addressing the backlash that she received for the teaser release of her song, “Yellow-Bone is What He Want.”
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CKcdnZ5gyy-/?igshid=3xasxxptutky
This video was created in response to the mostly negative public response towards the song and also the backlash that she initially received when she addressed the public’s concerns about it via Twitter. The original tweets have since been deleted, but screenshots of the tweets can be easily found in an internet search.
In the nearly two minute video, she defends her point of view for releasing the teaser to the song — she was attempting to celebrate light skin women, she says, and essentially meant no harm in disrespecting or offending anyone by doing it.
Alright. Fair enough.
What she did right
Of the few things that she did do right, the execution of the apology was decent. I thought it was a sincere move to post the apology just days after she released the teaser song and after posting the now-deleted tweets. Apologies are usually portrayed as more sincere if they are presented in a shorter time frame.
The video also did come off as more sincere than the tweets that she posted — she was definitely being way more defensive and reactive in the spur of the moment when she went on her Twitter rampage.
I also appreciate the fact that she got straight to the point. This is another sign of a sincere apology— no need to add extra explanations or drag out things with a side story. If you’re sincerely sorry, just say it, which is what I believe she did.
But there were definitely more things wrong with the apology than what was right. And it mostly had to do with what she said.
Where she missed
Let’s first start with the actual song.
Unfortunately, she probably actually didn’t mean any harm from putting out the song. She pointed out in the video that she wanted to celebrate women with lighter skin tones, which is great and all, but I don’t think she was the right messenger for it for two main reasons.
Starting with 1). A lot of people don’t consider her to be black, myself included. To me, DaniLeigh looks like a racially ambiguous woman and she even stated that, in one of her now-deleted tweets, that she was pretty much a little bit of everything.
And that’s also a problem because 2). Since a lot of people don’t consider her a black woman, myself included, she’s not a yellow-bone. A yellow-bone is a term used to describe light-skinned black women. Yes, she has lighter toned skin, but she’s not what most people would consider black. She is of Dominican descent and both of her parents favor and appear to look white as far as race.
Some people even went as far as claiming that the song had the same sentiment as Beyoncé’s “Brown Skin Girl.” I’d like to make it clear that the song definitely didn’t reach that level in any way, shape, or form, in my opinion. “Brown Skin Girl” was created to celebrate the women who are, more often than not, negatively affected by colorism in their respective racial and ethnic groups. It’s going to be hard to get away with a song that celebrates the women who benefit from colorism the most, one of them being DaniLeigh. And, quite frankly, I don’t think it’s needed.
Even the singing in the song itself, if that was what she considered “singing”, was terrible. I personally could not locate a single note. She claims that she was just playing around when she posted it and didn’t put much effort into it. I don’t know about y’all, but I can tell that not a lot of thought was put into it and I’d argue that it needs to stay as an unfinished project.
Now let’s get into what she said in the actual apology video.
The icing on the cake was that she brought up the typical “I’m not a racist” points — I’m dating a “chocolate man” (rapper, DaBaby). I have black friends. Skin isn’t something I even see.
All of these statements are ignorant.
Dating a black person and having black friends doesn’t erase the fact that someone is a racist/colorist or has any underlying prejudices and biases. The fact that she called her partner a “chocolate man” could easily play into the fetishization of black men. I will digress on this for the sake of the length of the article, though.
I won’t forget to mention that to be able to say that you are essentially “colorblind” to skin tone is a privilege. There are people whose entire well-being surrounds the fact that their skin is not white. Colorism has been a factor exhibited in the workplace (lighter-skinned people tend to be on the higher end of the wage gap), in the entertainment industry (lighter-skinned people represent people of color on TV shows and movies more than dark-skinned people), and even in the political world (people are more likely to favor lighter-skinned political candidates).
Her apology was also missing an action item of what she was going to do differently moving forward. What’s considered a sincere apology is one that demonstrates action. I’ll get more into this with my points for improvement in the next section.
How she can improve
As far as improvements, I just think she should have dug a little deeper into the meaning and history of colorism. Of course, no one is a complete expert, but I don’t think she truly understood her remark when she said, “Colorism is real.”
Perhaps she could have briefly explained why colorism is so real. If it was real to her and she had a better understanding of how real it was, she would have addressed the fact that it wasn’t the best idea for her to create the song. If she truly learned her lesson, she would have understood how sensitive of a topic it was for a lot of people for many of the reasons I previously stated. At least identifying what she now understood would have convinced me that she was a bit more sincere.
There’s an outstanding number of resources that can help anyone on how to better understand colorism. A YouTube channel that I’m personally subscribed to publishes regular content that I get insight from whenever I can. The content creator, who goes by Chrissy, talks about the microaggressions against dark skin black women in everyday life and in instances like this.
Hopefully, something was learned from this whether it be a better insight on the topic of colorism or even just a better idea of how to properly apologize. Please feel free to leave a comment or clap for this article, and you can even share your thoughts with me via my Twitter handle from my About page.
