How Khoudia Diop Learned To Love Her Dark Skin

She has a skin color that you don't often see in films, fashion or magazines.

Khoudia Diop, a 19-year-old student and model from Senegal, has a hard time coming up with words to describe it. It's so dark, she says, it almost seems blue.

It's what shot her to the social media stratosphere recently. In August, she posed in a photo campaign with black women of all shades for The Colored Girl, a group that challenges society's beauty standards.

Diop's pride in her skin has inspired hundreds of thousands of women to follow her on Instagram, where she posts photos of herself using the hashtags #melaninpoppin and #blackgirlmagic.

For The Colored Girl, that's the big-picture message. "Little black girls need to see that just by being themselves they are equal," says Victory Jones, who is one of the group's founders and now Diop's manager.

And while her skin tone is unusual in the world of modeling, it's not in Senegal. Marc Shriver, a professor of anthropology at Pennsylvania State University, has measured skin pigmentation around the world. From his research, he's found that people from Senegal and the islands of Micronesia have some of the darkest skin tones in the world. That's typical in countries close the equator, where the dark pigment melanin protects against UV damage from the sun's rays. He suspected that Diop was from Senegal the moment he saw her picture.

Yet even in Senegal, a land of dark hues, some people aspire for lighter tones. According to a 2002 study in the West African Journal of Medicine, the latest data, 52 to 67 percent of the Senegalese population used skin lightening products on their skin. Family members encouraged Diop to try these creams. People made fun of her coloring. But Diop knew from a young age that her skin made her unique. 

When did you first realize that your skin color was special?

I knew I was a little darker than my friends and family. But I realized that I was really unique when I was in Italy. I was walking on the street and I saw a big mirror. I saw myself among a lot of light-skinned people and I thought, "Wow, my skin is amazing." Then I understood why people and even modeling scouts stopped me in the street and told me to be a model.

Is that how you got into modeling?

When I was in high school in Paris, some photographers wanted my photos and asked if I was interested in modeling. I wasn't interested because I wanted to get my education first. I was scared because I didn't know what I was getting into.

But almost everybody was telling me, why not? So I did it because I wanted to inspire girls. When I was younger I didn't have any inspiration to like the skin I was in.

Have you met anyone else with your skin tone?

In my family, only my brother has a similar skin color. But in Senegal, the color is common.

Yet some people in Senegal use skin-lightening products.

Everyone there wants to be light. Everyone wants to be whiter. It's something that they need more education about. They don't know that being dark is something they don't need to change.

Did you face any pressure to change your skin color?

Once my cousins in Senegal asked me, "Why do you want to be that dark?" and told me to try skin-lightening creams. I wanted to try it at the time because I felt a little embarrassed being dark, but my sister told me not to, because she said my skin was unique and beautiful.

Did people ever make fun of you?

They called me "darkie" and "god of the night."

Now that you're modeling, what kind of comments do you get about your skin?

I hear a lot from women in Africa. And not just from dark-skinned women but from all women struggling because of insecurity. They thank me and tell me that I inspire them. And that makes me feel really, really proud.

Courtesy: NPR

The Door of No Return---A Solemn place for 3 U.S. Presidents.

Reporter reflects on Obama’s emotional visit — and her own — to African slave site

In a emotional visit to Senegal’s Goree Island, President Obama stood at the threshold of the “Door of No Return,” the place that’s come to symbolize the journey of millions of African slaves, who were bound, shackled and sent to America and other foreign lands.

American Urban Radio’s April Ryan, herself a descendant of slaves, has now visited Goree Island with three U.S. presidents, including Obama. She told Politics Confidential she gets goose bumps talking about the significance of the first African-American president’s visit to the “Door of No Return” at the historic slave house.

“Now you have an African-American president, a true African-American president, a son of a man born in Kenya, who does not necessarily have a direct link to slavery, and he will walk through that door,” Ryan told Politics Confidential aboard a ferry bound for Goree Island.

“He's come home, he's come home,” Ryan said. “And when I say he's come home, he, like myself, is a child of the motherland.”

Ryan reflected on what life must have been like for the slaves, describing the cramped conditions slaves were held in on Goree Island.

“When you walk through that slave house, you see the small rooms; you wonder how someone could do that to another human being, and the number of people crammed into those rooms,” Ryan said. “And to imagine, this was the last step that took them at least six months across the sea to where they became slaves.”

As a descendant of slaves, Ryan said she couldn’t help but feel emotional as the ferry approached the shores of Goree Island.

“I'm five generations removed from the last known slave in my family, and he was sold on the auction block in Fayetteville, North Carolina,” Ryan said. “So, it is poignant. I mean as a reporter, we are reporters, but sometimes the human experience comes in.”

For more of the interview with Ryan, including her recollections of her previous trips to the island while covering President Clinton and President George W. Bush, check out this episode of Politics Confidential.

ABC's Stephanie Smith, Mary Bruce, Michael Conte, Ginny Vicario, and John Glennon contributed to this episode. (June 28, 2013).