I have never worn sunscreen on my face until this year. I have always thought that only Caucasians meant its use on the surface. The damage in their skin was always obvious. Apparently I feel that brown or black skin is strong enough to withstand sun damage.
Well-worn phrases such as ‘black don’t crack’ reinforce this wrong idea. The biggest problem related to the sun was racialized in my upbringing. I heard that children should not play in the sun because it would make their skin darker, rather than how harmful the sun’s rays could be to our skin.
Many probably did not consider it to be potentially harmful to the skin because the effects were not immediate. Using sunscreen has always felt like a betrayal of my identity and mainly for this reason, I deliberately stayed away from it