Three students from the University of South Texas have started a movement that aims to help people embrace darker skinned tones and reject colourism.

When Andre 3000 stepped on stage during Outkast’s reunion tour wearing a jumpsuit emblazoned with the words, ‘across cultures darker people suffer most, why?’ the unambiguous message resonated and helped to broaden the lens we use to examine racial prejudice.

Colourism - the deeply ingrained, ritual act of discriminating against individuals with a darker skin tone often by people of the same ethnicity – still pervades South and South East Asia as well as Latin America and Africa.

Meanwhile, selfie culture has permeated our everyday lives to the extent that Amazon now see them as the next stage in password evolution, but three students from the University of South Texas are using the medium as a form of social activism.

What started as a photo project by Pax Jones, Mirusha Yogarajah and Yanusha Yogarajah, has morphed into the ‘Unfair and Lovely’ campaign: a platform that’s allowing both male and female Instagram users to post selfies alongside the hashtag #unfairandlovely. The images, alongside the accompanying testimonies that touch on their personal experiences, are forcibly challenging existent attitudes, and advancing the fight to eradicate colourism.