Effects of Colorism
Facts that have proven that there is advantage for those with lighter skin tones...
- Causes Tensions
- Colorism in the African-American community led to light-skinned blacks denying their darker counterparts access to join certain civic groups, sororities, etc. This led to these blacks being doubly discriminated against--by whites and the African-American "elite".
- Narrow Standards
- Those who embrace colorism not only tend to value lighter-skinned people over their darker-skinned counterparts but view the former as more intelligent, noble and attractive than darker complexioned people.
- White Supremacy
- Oppressed groups internalized the message and continue to do so today. Moreover, being a blonde and having blue eyes continue to be status symbols.
- Self-Hatred
- If a child is born with dark skin and learns that dark skin is not valued by her peers, community or society generally, the youth may develop feelings of shame.
Facts that have proven that there is advantage for those with lighter skin tones...
- Light-skinned Latinos make $5,000 more on average than dark-skinned Latinos, according to Shankar Vedantam, author of "The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives."
- Villanova University study of more than 12,000 African-American women imprisoned in North Carolina found that lighter-skinned black women received shorter sentences than their darker-skinned counterparts.
- Previous research by Stanford psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt found that darker-skinned black defendants were two times more likely than lighter-skinned black defendants to get the death penalty for crimes involving white victims.
- “We find that the light-skin shade as measured by survey interviewers is associated with about a 15 percent greater probability of marriage for young black women,” said researchers who conducted a study called “Shedding ‘Light’ on Marriage.”