Melanin Matters – Skin tone differentiation in Lagos, Nigeria (Part 1)

Sone & Solche – Wie Menschen einander unterscheiden

In November 2024, PhD student Marion Grimberg and podcast host Friederike Brinker travelled to Lagos, Nigeria, to talk about skin tone differentiation. We dedicated an entire week of events to this topic and, of course, we wanted you to be able to join the conversation. So, we recorded a podcast episode during our workshop for wome*n called “Living in your own skin”. For the podcast we conducted our usual interview with a scientist (in this case: three scientists), and also included shorter interviews with workshop participants who shared their personal experiences with skin tone differentiation. We have split the episode in two parts, the second episode will be published in early February.

In this episode we discuss light-skin privilege, skin lightening, and the difference between the concepts of colorism and skin tone differentiation.

Content note: Our guests also speak about their personal experiences with colorism and racism.

00:00:00-Intro

00:03:45-Project week

00:05:12-Dermatologist Dr. Cole-Adeife

00:12:50-Reasons for skin lightening

00:16:15-Assumptions about skin tone

00:21:40-What is melanin?

00:27:37-Idealization of light skin

00:33:10-Olabankes PhD project

00:36:00-Colorism, racism, skin ton differentiation

00:44:00-Different PoC experiences

00:52:00-Descriptive words for skin tone

01:01:15-Workshop participant on body dysmorphia

Our interviewees are:

Marion Grimberg, PhD Student and Social and Cultural Anthropologist at the CRC 1482 Human Differentiation researching skin tone differentiation in Nigeria and Germany.

Olabanke Goriola, PhD Student in Performance Studies at Northwestern University researching colorism among dark-skinned female Nigerian dancers.

Dr. Folakemi Cole-Adeife is a dermatologist and venereologist at Lagos State Teaching Hospital and a skin health influencer on Instagram and TikTok.

This podcast also includes shorter interviews with participants of our workshop “Living in your own skin” by Agatha Chidinma and Oluwaseyi.

If you want to learn more about this topic, we recommend:

• Watching our Melanin Matters panel discussion, which is available on YouTube
• Watching the Nigerian documentary “Skin” by Beverly Naya on YouTube
• Following our experts on Instagram:
  Marion Grimberg @marion_grimberg
  Olabanke Goriola @de.va.nie
  Dr. Folakemi Cole-Adeife @foladermadoc

This episode was created in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Nigeria.

To learn more about out work follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Host: Friederike Brinker (Sonderforschungsbereich 1482 Humandifferenzierung)

Producer: Ayooluwa Samuel (Reverb), Christian Albrecht (Zentrum für audiovisuelle Produktion)

Assistant: Tamara Vitzthum (Sonderforschungsbereich 1482 Humandifferenzierung)

The CRC Human Differentiation is part of the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and the Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte.

Feedback, questions and suggestionsl: [e-mail]

Foto: Marion Grimberg: Stephanie Füssenich, Olabanke Goriola & Dr. Folakemi Cole-Adeife: Private