Colorism: More Than Skin Deep

Walking through Flushing, a predominantly Asian neighborhood in Queens, I’ve encountered many stores advertising skin-lightening products. Such advertisements usually include a before and after picture of an Asian person having a whiter tone after using a lightening cream. Throughout my life, I’ve also been subject to comments concerning skin color among my relatives. Since then, I’ve always asked myself about the importance of skin color and why lighter skin is valued more than dark skin in our society.

These products are highly utilized in Asian countries: according to the World Health Organization, around 40 percent of women in China have admitted to using them. But these products aren’t exclusively used by Asians—77 percent of Nigerian women have bleached their skin at least once in their life, according to the same source. Such statistics show a frightening trend: people of color view lighter skin as a status symbol.

This view is commonly referred to as colorism, the form of prejudice or discrimination in which people are treated differently based on the social meanings attached to their skin color. Colorism enforces the idea of lighter skin being associated with wealth and success, with the opposite being true for darker skin tones. And unlike racism, colorism is discrimination within a single race. Such associations stem from historical interactions.

For example, this hierarchy of skin color was present in slavery, where the slave masters would be light-skinned and the slaves would be darker-skinned. For East Asians, darker skin is associated with poverty: tanned skin would have come from working in fields, whereas lighter skin is synonymous with being rich and historically being able to stay indoors.

As a result of the widespread nature of colorism, darker-skinned people of color have lower incomes, lower marriage rates, longer prison terms, and fewer job prospects than their lighter-skinned counterparts. Colorism is not limited to Asian culture, but is present in the lives of all people of color. In Latino culture, the phrase “mejorar la raza” is very common. In English, it means to “improve and advance the race,” and such improvement comes from marrying and having children with light-skinned people. Due to their lighter skin, these children are likely to be more successful and thus improve the Latino race. And such beliefs have real-world impacts. For instance, according to Shankar Vedantam, author of “The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives,” light-skinned Latinos make $5,000 more on average than their dark-skinned Latino counterparts.

Furthermore, a Villanova University study found that light-skinned black women received shorter sentences than their darker-skinned counterparts. In addition to shorter sentences, lighter-skinned black defendants were half as likely to get the death penalty for crimes involving white victims than darker-skinned blacks, according to Stanford psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt.

Unfortunately, the media further encourages this interracial divide based on skin tone in Hollywood. There is a lack of diversity in black skin tones in Hollywood movies, for lighter-skinned black actors are usually cast over their darker-skinned counterparts. Furthermore, darker-skinned actors are often given roles as the villains of movies. These roles often enforce negative stereotypes about darker-skinned blacks, including being poorer, less attractive, and of lower social status.

The lack of representation of the array of skin tones that people of color come in encourages a strict interpretation of beauty—a toxic perception that centers around the glorification of European characteristics. African-American actress Tatyana Ali has faced discrimination in the workplace for having dark skin. Her opinion on the eurocentric beauty ideal is that “it doesn’t just exist in Hollywood. I think it exists in society...The closer we were to White, the more freedom we thought we could have or the more acceptability. Beauty was defined as White and the farther away you get from that White-blonde-hair-blue-eye definition of beauty, the uglier you are...that’s what we’ve been doing amongst ourselves for a very long time.”

The message that all shades of skin tones are beautiful and equal should be shared and encouraged by the media in 2018. By casting more diverse people in Hollywood and battling to change what it means to be beautiful, the stereotypes and distaste regarding darker tones can be broken. When I think about the countless advertisements for lighter skin products, I realize that these products are more than skin deep: they represent a larger historical context, which is our duty to change.