• DOI:10.1111/J.1751-9020.2007.00006.X
• Corpus ID: 11960841

The Persistent Problem of Colorism: Skin Tone, Status, and Inequality

@article{Hunter2007ThePP,
  title={The Persistent Problem of Colorism: Skin Tone, Status, and Inequality},
  author={Margaret Hunter},
  journal={Sociology Compass},
  year={2007},
  volume={1},
  pages={237-254}
}

• M. Hunter
• Published 1 September 2007
• Art
• Sociology Compass

Colorism is a persistent problem for people of color in the USA. Colorism, or skin color stratification, is a process that privileges light-skinned people of color over dark in areas such as income, education, housing, and the marriage market. This essay describes the experiences of African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans with regard to skin color. Research demonstrates that light-skinned people have clear advantages in these areas, even when controlling for other background variables. However, dark-skinned people of color are typically regarded as more ethnically authentic or legitimate than light-skinned people. Colorism is directly related to the larger system of racism in the USA and around the world. The color complex is also exported around the globe, in part through US media images, and helps to sustain the multibillion-dollar skin bleaching and cosmetic surgery industries. Racial discrimination is a pervasive problem in the USA. African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and other people of color are routinely denied access to resources and fair competition for jobs and schooling. Despite this pattern of exclusion, people of color have made great progress in combating persistent discrimination in housing, the labor market, and education. However, hidden within the process of racial discrimination is the often overlooked issue of colorism. Colorism is the process of discrimination that privileges light-skinned people of color over their dark-skinned counterparts (Hunter 2005). Colorism is concerned with actual skin tone, as opposed to racial or ethnic identity. This is an important distinction because race is a social concept, not significantly tied to biology (Hirschman 2004). Lighter-skinned people of color enjoy substantial privileges that are still unattainable to their darker-skinned brothers and sisters. In fact, light-skinned people earn more money, complete more years of schooling, live in better neighborhoods, and marry higher-status people than darker-skinned people of the same race or ethnicity (Arce et al. 1987; Espino and Franz 2002; Hill 2000; Hughes and Hertel 1990; Hunter 1998, 2005; Keith and Herring 1991; Murguia and Telles 1996; Rondilla and Spickard 2007).