Colorism


Colorism

In every culture I have ever encountered there is some form of colorism. According to Google, colorism, which is also called shadeism, is discrimination based on skin tone. This discrimination is directed towards people with darker skin tones, with "dark" being relative to the culture and geographic location in question. There is a universal archetype of lighter skin being perceived as desirable and associated with positive attributes and darker skin being viewed as undesirable and associated with negative attributes. Colorism results in the preferential treatment of lighter-skinned people, for instance lighter-skinned people exclusively being featured in TV shows and magazines as in certain South American cultures. Colorism is also biases against darker-skinned people, e.g. being relegated to a social outcast status and forced to endure extreme hardships as in the caste system in India. In many places including the U.S., colorism takes the form of lighter-skinned people of color and white people being more likely to be hired for a job. 

The prevalence of colorism in communities of color has often (and rightly so) been attributed to the continuing effects of colonialism. There is truth to this: colonialism, which the Global South is still recovering from, created the current world structure in which white people and countries are in positions of power. This has resulted in colonized peoples internalizing racism and hatred of themselves, their peers and cultures, including darker or non-white skin. However, this is where the archetype comes back into play: my friend wrote a paper on shadeism or colorism in high school and it discussed how lighter skin was seen as more beautiful/desirable in India long before the British ever set foot there. Similarly, in Ethiopia (then known as Abyssinia), lighter skin was considered more beautiful/preferable long before Europeans ever set foot in the country.

I wanted to write this blog post on colorism to draw attention to how colorism within communities of color is parallel to racism perpetuated against communities of color. I see colorism as a form of both white supremacy and anti-Blackness. According to Google, white supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to all other races and should therefore dominate society. Colorism is based on the belief that lighter-skinned people of color are superior to darker-skinned people of color and should therefore dominate society. Colorism enacts the same violence of white supremacy in a different way. Colorism is simultaneously anti-Blackness because it operates on the belief that darker skin and features in people of color are inferior/negative/undesirable/bad.

 I have heard stories where darker skin and curly hair are seen as undesirable along with Blackness in non-Black communities of color. Darker, curly-haired non-black people of color are discriminated against in their own communities and sometimes met with derogatory language that explicitly refers to Blackness. In this sense, there is also a parallel between colorism in non-Black communities of color and their anti-Blackness, which Google has no definition for but I know to be the extreme and irrational hatred of Black people. I acknowledge my privilege as a lighter-skinned Black/African/Ethiopian woman in the U.S. I see the importance of tackling and preventing colorism in communities of color in the fight against white supremacy and anti-Blackness.


Related: She, as Dark as Night
Hyphenated Ethiopian third culture kid. Twitter: @moonchereka

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