Colorism: Discrimination and Prejudice Among Minorities

Staples recounts the unscrupulous history of hiring practices during the Jim Crow era, a time where the importance of skin color was more explicitly stated in employment advertisements claiming “whiteness” as a job qualification. Colorism is still very much ingrained in the minds of Americans as seen in a study conducted by the University of Georgia in 2006, which concluded that employers will prefer to hire a lighter-skin candidate over a darker-skinned candidate even if they have equal qualifications. In fact, skin pigmentation holds such significance that an individual that has a lighter complexion with a bachelor’s degree and entry level work experience has a greater chance of getting hired over someone that has a darker complexion yet holds an MBA and past managerial work experience (Staples, 2008). This study implies that lighter-skinned individuals are perceived as more competent and better fit for employment regardless of their qualifications because they are deemed “more white” and have more “white qualities”.

The skin tone stratification extends to within the Black and African American community itself, where lighter complexion individuals are more likely to be described as the positive stereotypes associated with Whites while a darker complexion is ascribed to negative stereotypes that are commonly associated with Blackness. Colorism creates a divide in the Black and African American communities almost as stringent as the racial dichotomy between Blacks and Whites, it involves deep-rooted internalized racism. In the 20th century, this division was explicitly asserted through the “brown paper bag” test. This test required the individual in question to compare their skin tone to a brown paper bag to determine if they could benefit from certain privileges. The preferred skin tone from this test was equal to or lighter than the bag and a skin tone darker than the bag was unpreferred. This notion became a social norm reflected in a common schoolyard saying that rehashes societal rules:

“If you’re black, stay back;

If you’re brown, stick around;

If you’re yellow, you’re mellow;

If you’re white, you’re all right.”

Colorism has affected the way society views darker-skinned individuals with negative connotations often associating them with lower income and less education. In general, lighter skinned Blacks are more likely to have a higher education, higher salaries, and more prominent jobs that darker skinned Blacks (Harrison & Thomas, 2009). The effect of skin color on educational attainment and social status between light and dark skinned Blacks is equivalent to the effect of race between Whites and Blacks on these two domains, resulting in the clear significance of color stratification in American society (Hill, 2000). Lighter skinned Blacks are more likely to experience educational and economic advancement than those with darker pigmentation (Seltzer & Smith, 1991). These advantages allocated to lighter skinned Blacks emphasize interracial and intraracial problems in American society that privileges light skin over dark skin.

The effects of colorism are far reaching and shaped by the race-based culture and history that have created intricate hierarchies that privilege those who are whiter and punish those who are darker. Colorism exists in almost every vein of society, one such being the legal system. Darker complexioned African Americans are twice as likely to be sentenced the death penalty than lighter skinned counterparts that are accused of the eqivalent crimes involving white victims (Vedantam, 2010). Stanford psychologist, Jennifer Eberhart sifted through hundreds of capital punishment worthy cases and found an interesting pattern emerge: lighter skinned defendents were not given as severe punishments as darker skinned defendents. One example is the case of Arthur Hawthorne versus Ernest Porter. Arthur Hawthorne was a light skinned Black man who ransacked a drug store for money and drugs and murdered the pharmacist of the drug store. Hawthorne was identified as the killer by several eyewitnesses. Meanwhile, Ernest Porter, the darker skinned defendant, was linked to the murder of a beautician but was only being held on trial based on weak evidence. An eyewitness for Porter’s case came out later with the admission that they were forced to testify against Porter by the prosecution even though they didn’t believe that he was the correct suspect. Porter also had two witnesses for his alibi but they were never brought to the stand to testify for Porter. Instead, Porter was held in court and sentenced to the death penalty while Hawthorne only received a life sentence. In this case, the lighter skinned defendant that clearly committed a murder received a lighter sentence and the darker skinned defendant was sentenced to a harsher sentence even with no clear evidence against him. Colorism could have affected the jurys’ perception of the defendants based on skin color taking root from the age old “more black equals bad” ideology.

Research conducted about the intermingling of colorism and the likelihood of arrest suggested that the opposite is true, that the incarceration rates of Black men remain constant over the spectrum of skin color while the incarceration rates for White men decrease as skin pigmentation becomes lighter (Branigan et al., 2017). Although this piece of evidence remains contrary to the prior evidence, colorism still remains a divisive social issue in the Black and African American community. There are many testimonies from dark-skin and light-skin individuals that relate the struggles that each group faces as a minority in a racial hierarchical society.

As explicit racism during the human slave trade and Jim Crow era wanes, colorism is on the rise as an implicit way to create division and perpetuate external and internal racism among people of color communities. Colorism is an issue that is dealt with on both the interracial and intraracial levels as an unconscious and brooding problem. The focus on skin pigmentation allows for intraracial stratification to continue and for lighter skinned individuals to be placed near the top of the social ladder near the Whites while never obtaining the full privileges of a White individual. These differences must be met with the realization that bi-racial and multi-racial individuals will still be treated as a person of color in American society. The opportunities for success presented to lighter-skinned individuals is a step in the right direction for racial equality though the intraracial division between light and dark skin in the Black and African American communities must first be addressed.