Shelby x Dark Hues Magazine

Zine

Apr 19

ABOUT DARK HUES

Dark Hues is a digital magazine that champions Dark-skinned People of Colour with marginalised gender identities. We want to create a safe space to showcase our talents, our stories and our faces.

Why Dark-skinned People of Colour with marginalised gender identities?

Overall, the majority of People of Colour are under-represented or misrepresented. This representation then lessens the more melanin you have. And if you’re a woman, non-binary person or trans-man. ‘Colourism’ as Lupita Nyong’o calls it “the daughter of racism” plays a big part and this platform is a way for us to challenge those ideas and create beautiful positive content exclusively for us.

When she is told, her skin is ‘too dark. I do not hesitate to offer ‘that the sun loved her so much, it kissed her more than the rest of us’

We interviewed Chizoba Itabor, co-founder of Dark Hues Magazine, as part of our research for the Bristol + Bath Creative R+D programme to find out more about their work and how it relates to the topic of Amplified Publishing.

Shelby X: Could you start by introducing Dark Hues Magazine. We'd love to hear a little about why you started it and who's behind the brand?

Chizoba: Dark Hues Magazine is a digital magazine that features articles, poems, pictures, music and much more from dark skin Black and Brown women, non-binary people and trans men. Myself and my friend Veema are the co-founders and co-editors-in-chief of this platform. We decided to create Dark Hues because we were sick and tired of the lack of accurate and fair representation of Dark Skin POC. Especially those who of us with marginalised gender identities as our representation tends to be worse.

Shelby X: Does activism play a role in what you do? If so, in what ways?

Chizoba: I wouldn’t say activism plays a role in what I do as I am not an activist. However activists have inspired me to do something to help marginalised people like myself.

Shelby X: Do you have a particular audience in mind for your content? How do you typically go about reaching them?

Chizoba: Our target audience is dark skin Black and Brown women, non-binary people and trans men. We use Instagram to reach our audience as many people are on this app. Plus it’s a good marketing tool for our magazine, as well as a good platform to upload original or repost digital content from dark skin creators. Having an active Instagram account has even led us to gain volunteers.

Shelby X: What are some of the wins and challenges you face as a magazine creating content in 2022?

Chizoba:

The wins include:

Collaborating with talented dark skin POC
Discovering talented dark skin POC
Debunking harmful myths of Dark Skin POC, by creating a platform that represents us in more accurate and positive way
Providing opportunities for dark skin POC to showcase their art

The lows include:

Sometimes It feels like we’re being shadow banned, as it is difficult for us to gain followers on Instagram and our engagement can be low occasionally
We don’t have the funds (yet) to make Dark Hues our full time responsibility so we cannot be as consistent as we would like to be
Colourism does make it hard to feature a wide range of dark skin POC on our platforms

Shelby X: How does Dark Hues Magazine operate in terms of being online and offline?

Chizoba: So far we only operate online and that’s partly due to the ongoing pandemic. We mainly create articles, social media posts as well as playlists on Spotify. Furthermore we repost content from other dark skin creators. We also have a series called #DarkHuesChats where we interview various talented Dark skin people.

Shelby X: What are your hopes for Dark Hues Magazine's future?

Chizoba:

Honestly my hopes are to:

Gain more followers and engagement for our social media platforms
Gain more traffic to our website
Get funding so we’re able to run this full time and pay our volunteers
Continue to collaborate with talented and ethical people
Represent more Dark Skin POC authentically who generally tend to be unrepresented