Colorism And Racism

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Racism is more than just black and white. It is every shade between the two. It is colorism: “the process that privileges light-skinned people of color over dark in areas such as income, education, housing, and the marriage market” (Hunter, 274). Colorism is similar to racism in the fact that it grants privileges and rights to one group and not another due to visual features and that it has been around since race was acknowledged. However, unlike racism, many do not even know what colorism is or that it is problematic. Among those who do concede to the problem of colorism, are researchers of different disciplines who identify both the cause and effects of colorism and attempt to provide solutions. This literature review discourses the common …show more content…
An example of this is seen in the article “Skin Complexion in the Twenty-First Century: the Impact of Colorism on African American Women,” which suggests that even though physical slavery has ended, mental slavery still occurs through a color caste. From this caste, women of darker complexions develop lower self-esteem because they further deviate from the standard of beauty (qtd in Mathews and Johnson). Similarly, Christopher Charles, political psychologist, offers a historical context to the development of colorism in Jamaican women in his article “Skin Bleaching and the Prestige Complexion of Sexual Attraction.” Charles describes that due to British colonialism and plantation slavery in Jamaica, the ideal skin tone shifted from one that resembled the victims of oppression to the oppressors themselves (376). This ties into the mental slavery discussed by Mathews and Johnson; although the black people are physically free, they still have the thought processes they had to adopt while in chains, that they will always be inferior. Colorism is the product of racism and slavery, and these two things that once had a visible hold on black people have now been mutated into something people no longer can …show more content…
Lance Hannon and Robert Defina quote in their article “Just Skin Deep?” that there is as almost as big of an intra-racial wage gap between light and dark skinned people as the inter-racial wage gap between white and black people (qtd. in 356). They show that it is not only the skin color of one’s skin that has financial effects, but also the skin tone. Margret Hunter further elaborates on the gap between light and dark skinned black people in her article “The Persistent Problem of Colorism: Skin Tone, Status, and Inequality.” She emphasizes the fact that lighter skinned people get higher wages, are more likely to have higher education, and live in better neighborhoods (Hunter, 237). Although the classification of race is the same, the articles display the advantages of appearing closer to the appearance of a white person, of lighter skin equating to better
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