“Dr. Webb offers helpful frameworks that are grounded in research, and she uses the arts to humanize the conversation. I have rarely been in a professional training on such a difficult subject matter that felt so honest and transforming for everyone involved.” -Anna West, Ph.D.
“Dr. Webb was phenomenal! While Colorism is a heavy topic, she delivered the message with such poise and thoroughness. Her knowledge on Colorism is amazing.” -Linda Anderson, MBA
Dr. Sarah Webb helps companies, schools, and organizations advance their justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) missions through speaking, training, and professional development workshops.
Some of Dr. Sarah Webb’s Past Clients & Media Appearances
Dr. Sarah L. Webb launched the global initiative Colorism Healing in 2013 to raise awareness and foster individual and collective healing through creative and critical work.
Dr. Webb’s myriad efforts to address colorism include designing college courses, hosting an international writing contest, publishing books, teaching workshops, and mentoring students across the world from Sacramento, California to Sydney, Australia.
Because of her work and expertise on colorism, Dr. Webb has written and contributed to several academic and non-academic articles, presented at numerous conferences, and been featured on regional NPR stations, Fox Soul TV, the Illinois Times, Forbes.com, The Tavis Smiley Radio Show, MTV, and the TEDx stage.
We have made it to the end of the Corporate Colorism Series!
Thank you so much for engaging in this important conversation with me!
If you haven’t read all the articles or watched all the live streams, I highly recommend going back to get caught up on anything you’ve missed.
This week is focused on how to respond to colorism once we have the awareness and the understanding of what it is and how it manifests!
Throughout this series, I have sprinkled advice, tips, and action steps you can take toward solving this problem. But now I want to introduce you to a framework that will help you get strategic about your efforts to address colorism.
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The I.R.I.S. framework represents the 4 layers of society impacted by colorism, which are also the 4 layers in which we create change:
Individual– personal bias and mental health
Relational– interactions between individuals or small groups
Institutional– policies, procedures, norms, or culture within a larger entity
Systemic– far-reaching patterns across the larger society
There are 4 levers that help us set the wheel of change into motion: Awareness, Assessment, Attitudes, and Action.
The human iris (the colored circles of our eyes) is like the human fingerprint–no two humans have the same eye color. Inspired by this fact, the I.R.I.S. framework is uniquely applied to each person, entity, or culture.
If you’d like direct support in how to apply this framework, visit ColorismHealing.com! Businesses, companies, schools, agencies, and other entities can contact me for public speaking, training, and consulting services. Andfor individuals, I’m offering coaching, support groups, live Zoom workshops, in-person events, and more! You can contact me for all these things via email, Direct Messages on LinkedIn or Instagram, and via my website colorismhealing.com.
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
Homework: 1- Make sure you’re all caught up with each of the previous articles/videos in this series. 2- Take the time you need to review, process, clarify, etc. and 3- Contact me or join one of my upcoming events and workshops!
Recent events have brought international attention to the crime of murdering innocent and unarmed Black people in the United States.
But what far too many people still choose to ignore is just how many of those Black people also happen to be dark-skinned, with full facial features, and afro hair textures.
What’s upsetting is that to the degree people say they care about ending unjust profiling (of all sorts, not just the kind that results in lost lives) they are actually sabotaging justice by refusing to seriously acknowledge and address the role of colorism.
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Overt profiling, the kind that most often makes the news, involves actively doing things like calling security based on biased suspicion or outright denying service, for example. As I’ve explained before, these incidents are more likely to happen to people with darker skin tones because of the stronger associations with racial stereotypes.
Though racial and ethnic profiling have been discussed for decades, most people overlook the fact that we rely on skin tone, and other physical traits like hair, to assume race in the first place. Therefore, we severely miss the mark if we discuss racial profiling without the lens of colorism.
Racial profiling first requires the perception of race. Therefore, having a complexion, hair texture, and facial features strongly associated with the targeted group greatly increases the likelihood of racial profiling. (Learn more about this article)
Even though they don’t make breaking news, subtle microaggressions in customer service are probably more common than the more dramatic instances of racial profiling. Here are a few examples of how this plays out in customer service:
not offering assistance when it’s standard to do so
making a customer wait a longer time than usual
not greeting a customer as they enter
not saying thank you as the customer leaves
following or covertly surveilling customers
asking for more verification than what’s asked of others
calling security because you think someone looks suspicious
This list is not even close to exhaustive. There are myriad statements, actions, inactions, etc. that could fall in this category.
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
Homework: Insist on using a colorism framework when talking about and addressing profiling.
Affirmation: I am ready to stop sabotaging justice. I am ready to fully recognize and respond to the significance, the scope, and the stakes of colorism.
I know you’ve seen colorism in media, in marketing, in photographs, on billboards, in commercials, in print ads, in journalism and news articles. It’s everywhere!
So what can be done about it?
Let me explain.
In this article, I share specific insights and takeaways about colorism in visual and verbal media that anyone can use to help change the narrative.
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When it comes to addressing colorism in marketing or in media, it’s not just a matter of whether dark-skinned people are included. It’s just as important to be intentional about how they’re included. It’s a matter of both quantity and quality of representation, with quantity being one measure of quality.
Many people might be aware that racial stereotypes impact how people are treated in society. Negative racial stereotypes result in unjust brutality and killings by police officers, discriminatory hiring, discriminatory housing, malpractice in healthcare, and other social injustices. However, people are usually unaware that these stereotypes are significantly stronger toward individuals with dark skin tones, broader facial features, and afro-textured hair.
Changing the Narrative:
Change starts with building teams that include meaningful leadership and contributions by dark-skinned people.
It also requires an intersectional lens on representation. For examples, a common gap is along the axis of gender where assets include representation for dark-skinned men while missing representation for dark-skinned women.
Visual Rhetoric:
There are certain visual cues and patterns that can contribute to these narratives and reinforce the colorism hierarchy:
Positioning of people within the frame (front and center vs. periphery and rear)
Amount of time on screen
Size of photographs (who gets full-page spreads vs. thumbnails)
Placement of photographs (front cover vs. back cover)
Quality face-time (close ups vs. long shots, frontal vs. profile)
Quality lighting for darker skin tones
Well-styled wardrobe, hair, and makeup (hire dark-skinned leaders and consultants)
Overall color palettes
Body language blocking
Verbal Rhetoric
Colorism is also frequently perpetuated in written media or in verbal phrases and statements. An example of how to shift perceptions and narratives with verbal rhetoric would be vigilance about phrases like “dirty brown,” and instead expanding your vocabulary to include phrases like “rich brown,” “warm brown,” or “deep brown,” etc.
We must also remember that verbal rhetoric is also what we don’t say. This is especially true when there’s a contrast in how you describe someone with lighter skin and someone with darker skin.
I saw this recently in the TV show Your Honor, where the dark-skinned woman flattered her light-skinned partner with phrases like “You’re perfect” and “Don’t worry your pretty face.” There were no corresponding compliments given to the dark-skinned woman.
The power of visual and verbal rhetoric is multiplied when they’re working in tandem. We must analyze both to fully understand how harmful narratives are created and perpetuated, and in order to change those narratives.
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
Homework: Assess words and images you’re exposed to and the ones you use. Revise them to change the narrative about color and complexion.
Affirmation: I have agency to revise personal and systemic narratives.
Full transparency: I don’t actually want to talk about colorism. I’m actually frustrated by it, and wish that I did not have to even think about it.
But colorism is real. It’s still reeking havoc across the globe. And I can’t ignore that.
One of the damaging effects of colorism is that it degrades people’s wellbeing if left untreated.
For companies, businesses, and institutions: Colorism negatively impacts morale, creativity, and overall employee wellness.
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Research on Colorism and Physical Health
Because so much primary focus is given to racial disparities, there’s far less research on the impact of colorism on health. But the existing and emerging research is showing us that those who experience colorism face more issues with cardiovascular health, pain-related disorders, sensory dysfunction, and disease overall. (Learn more about this article)
One example of how systemic bias exists in healthcare is the research on pulse oximeters, widely used medical devices designed to measure oxygen levels. Studies have shown that these devices provide inaccurate results for people with darker pigment, i.e. people with darker skin tones. (Learn more about this)
Research on Colorism and Mental Health
The bulk of the health research on colorism has focused on mental health. The unsurprising results show that having darker skin corresponds with decreased mental health due to experiences of colorism. (Learn more about this article)
As companies strive to promote wellness, remember colorism as a unique stressor that differentially impacts people even if they’re the same race.
Insights & Key Takeaways:
1) Re-evaluate your policies and your bias about personal time off, sick leave, remote work, health insurance, and other forms of care and support that dark-skinned people might need.
First, make sure these forms of support are present, known, and understood by employees.
But what’s just as necessary is learning how to stop judging or stigmatizing people who actually use all of these resources to the max.
For Example: Even when sick leave is an option, or remote work is an option, dark-skinned people are often more harshly judged or stigmatized if and when they use it.
2) When studying medical racism, include a colorism framework. Of the Black people negatively impacted by medical racism, of the Black people who die as a result of medical racism, how many of them, what percentage of them are dark-skinned?
Consider other intersections as well such as body size, disability, SES, gender and sexuality, language, etc.
Sadly, even some (many?) Black healthcare professionals and leaders refuse to consider colorism as a factor in medical racism. Why are they so afraid to do the research? If colorism is not a factor, then the research will prove that it isn’t. But to refuse to even consider it as a possible variable, is actually insidious. If you care about saving Black lives, you have to care about colorism. There’s no way around that.
3) For dark-skinned people, know that you’re not delusional. You do have legitimate reasons to be extra focused on your self-care. You do have legitimate reasons to demand more of your support systems and healthcare providers. You do have legitimate reasons to be firm with your boundaries.
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
Homework: Prioritize your wellness this week, whatever that means or looks like for you.
Affirmation: I am learning how to take great care of myself.
You’ve probably heard of racial microaggressions. Most people talk about them as things that white people do to people of color, or something that happens across racial groups.
But colorism is also a source of microaggressions. And it happens across races as well as between people of the same race.
For any group, organization, business, institution, or company that’s genuinely seeking to foster an inclusive environment, you must be aware of colorism and the subtle ways it’s often perpetuated.
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Refresh on Microaggressions:
Several people have said they’re not so “micro,” and I agree. The cumulative toll of microaggressions is quite damaging, just as much as more catastrophic events.
One reason they’ve gotten coined as “microaggressions” is because of the level of plausible deniability inherent in them, because of the way they seem difficult to “prove,” and because of their often passing and subtle nature.
Often these incidents could even appear benefic, friendly, or helpful on the surface, masking a put down under the guise of helpfulness, for example. We might also think of it as passive aggressive behaviors as well.
These incidents easily lend themselves to gaslighting: Are you sure it’s not just ignorance on his part rather than colorism? I don’t see what’s so harmful in that. She was just being helpful. I’m sure they didn’t mean anything by it. How do you know it’s racially motivated? Did she mention anything about your race or skin tone??Have other people complained about it?
And any of the infinite ways folks try to plant seeds of doubt about the validity of what you’re feeling and what you observed.
I also want to emphasize that microaggressions aren’t just about words, statements, jokes, or things that people say. They can also come in the form of what is not said and other actions or behaviors that don’t involve words.
A simple example: Walking past one colleague’s desk every day and never acknowledging them while always promptly offering a warm, enthusiastic greeting to the colleague who sits next to them.
These type of in-action microaggressions are the ones I’ve experienced most often in my professional (and personal) experience.
Imagine that you survive colorism in your educational journey. You survive colorism in your job search. And you even navigate colorism in negotiating a higher pay. So you’re in there! You’re in the door. And then you realize…
That colorism just continues.
The colorist perceptions and narratives that impact the educational pipeline, hiring, and wages also operate for ongoing judgements and evaluations of professional performance, opportunities for mentorship, and prospects for career advancement and promotion.
This is part of a series on Corporate Colorism, so if you haven’t been with me from the beginning, you can get caught up here.
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Notions of intelligence, competence, professionalism, culture fit, and overall character continue to favor light-skinned employees.
How often do you look at an organizational chart and find that the more senior levels get increasingly light and/or white?
We observe this time and time again, and it corresponds with the research I shared in my live on colorism in hiring. Light-skinned people are over-represented in more prestigious, higher paying positions. Dark-skinned people are over-represented in more pedestrian, lower paying positions.
Companies have to avoid creating yet another glass ceiling where dark-skinned people are hired but not promoted to leadership positions. And when dark-skinned people are promoted, companies must provide equitable conditions for their continued success.
One of the most common reports of colorism in the workplace faced by dark-skinned women especially is that once they acquire leadership positions, they’re often targeted by the people they manage or supervise or work alongside, and this includes other Black people.
In my work, I’ve heard so many case studies of:
insubordination
ignoring the established chain of command
gossip
cold-shouldering
filing complaints against them for being “difficult” to work with
questioning their intelligence, competency, and fit for the position
This can happen for any Black woman, but disproportionately impacts those with dark skin.
In many cases, dark-skinned women are more likely promoted in “glass cliff” situations when there’s a sinking ship that others don’t want to deal with or don’t want to take the blame for when things inevitably implode.
I have experienced this on more than one occasion as a teacher and professor in academia where sometimes students or colleagues, including Black students and colleagues, really took issue with me based on their biases about my skills, competencies, expertise, etc.
We also must recognize that whatever biases and forms of discrimination are artificially suppressing outcomes for darker-skinned people are also artificially bolstering the outcomes for lighter-skinned people. I find that my white colleagues and light-skinned colleagues have a lot of cognitive dissonance around this.
It’s not just a matter of darker-skinned people having lower performance ratings because of colorism. It’s also lighter-skinned people having higher performance ratings because of colorism.
White employees and light-skinned employees seem to assume that their performance evaluations are accurate, and that bias only deflates ratings for marginalized groups. But bias also inflates ratings for the favored groups.
If people didn’t have negative bias against those with darker skin, our ratings wouldn’t be as low. But also, if people didn’t have positive bias in favor of those with lighter skin, your ratings wouldn’t be as high.
Lastly, I’ll simply note that recognition for a job well done without corresponding compensation in the form of a commensurate bonus or pay increase only perpetuates further inequity.
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
Homework: Look for concrete ways to support a dark-skinned woman who’s in leadership.
Affirmation: I am not threatened by anyone else’s success. My path is uniquely mine, and I celebrate it!
If you’re a business, school, organization, or other institution caught discriminating against employees because of their skin tone, you can get SUED!
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a government agency in the United States, has settled multiple cases of skin tone discrimination within the workforce, and in this article, I’m sharing examples of these lawsuits and my insights and key takeaways for business leaders. (See the EEOC case summaries)
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According to the EEOC case summaries, instances of creating an unsafe and hostile work environment on the basis of skin tone have included:
“the transportation department engaged in race and color discrimination when it failed to select the Complainant, the Acting Division Secretary, for the position of Division Secretary. The EEOC found the Agency’s explanation to be ‘so fraught with contradiction as not to be credible,’ and thus, a pretext for discrimination.”
“an estimator and assistant project manager was subjected to derogatory comments from his supervisors, project manager and the company’s owner on the basis of his national origin (Pakistani), religion (Islam), and color (brown). The lawsuit indicated that the comments occurred almost daily and included things like telling the estimator he was the same color as human feces.”
“a light skinned Black female manager subjected darker skinned African American employees to a hostile and abusive work environment because of their color. The lawsuit alleged that the manager told one employee she looked as ‘Black as charcoal’ and repeatedly called her ‘charcoal’ until she quit.”
“a Bangladeshi employee who was assigned to be store manager of a Staten Island location allegedly was told by her district supervisor that Staten Island was a predominantly White neighborhood and that she should change her dark skin color if she wanted to work in the area. EEOC asserted that the supervisor also allegedly told her that she really should be working in Harlem with her dark skin color and threatened to terminate her if she did not accept a demotion and a transfer to the Harlem store. The employee also was subjected to national origin discrimination based on her name and accent when the district supervisor allegedly excluded the employee from staff meetings because he said the other employees could not understand her accent and asked her to change her name because the customers could not pronounce it.”
“a Black male hospital director who abused all employees was not insulated from liability for racially harassing an African American female where evidence showed that she was the target of more egregious and public abuse than other employees. Evidence revealed that the director told her he only hired because she is a Black woman, he often used profanity toward her, referred to her by race and gender slurs, singled her out for verbal abuse in front of other employees, told plaintiff to ‘get your Black ass out of here.'”
Outcomes for the companies in these cases have included payouts of as much as $150,000; consent decrees; required training; and systems for reporting, tracking, and addressing complaints.
Insights & Takeaways:
1) Companies should be proactive rather than reactive.
2) Make DEIB consciousness and skills a requirement for hiring and promotion, especially for leadership positions.
3) Many of these cases happened locally and were perpetuated by local managers, supervisors, and coworkers who interacted on a consistent basis. This means that businesses have to do better about establishing a culture of equity, inclusion, and belonging throughout all sectors of the business.
Not just at corporate headquarters, but what’s happening on the assembly line, in the plants, in the factories and warehouses, in the local branches of the company, or in field operations, etc.?
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
Homework: Open a conversation with your HR departments about their level of awareness and preparedness to take action on cases of colorism, same-race discrimination, intersectional discrimination, etc. And discuss how your company can be proactive in how it writes policies, develops trainings, etc.
I had a social media follower reach out and tell me she recently had to make a report to HR. If you have to make a report, equip yourself by reviewing these EEOC case summaries and have them on hand.
One of the best lines from the series Little Fires Everywhere was when Kerry Washington’s character says to Reese Witherspoon’s character:
“You didn’t MAKE good choices, you HAD good choices.”
There’s literally no such thing as a “self-made man” because literally, no man has ever made or given birth to himself.
All of us, only exist because of choices and actions far beyond our control that happened years, generations, even centuries, before we were born.
I’ve previously explained how privilege compounds across an individual’s lifetime and across generations. Today, I want to pick up that conversation again and to help explain some of the color-based wealth gaps that exist in different societies.
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Because lighter-skinned people historically had greater access to financial, political, educational, and social capital than darker-skinned people within their race, their children and descendants likely benefit from compounding generational advantages. Although not all these descendants would necessarily have light skin, this phenomenon does partly explain the perpetual socioeconomic disparities over time.
In some Asian cultures, this has shown up through caste systems where lighter-skinned groups retain systemic power across multiple generations.
Among African Americans in the United States, this has shown up in lighter-skinned communities excluding dark-skinned people from schools, churches, neighborhoods, and social clubs that were designed to protect and elevate various forms of capital–financial, political, and social.
Insights & Takeaways:
1) The ongoing wealth gaps we see that correspond to skin tone are partly explained by present discrimination in hiring and pay. However, persistent wealth gaps are also the result of the literal inheritances that lighter skinned (or white) parents, grandparents, etc. have been able to pass down to their progeny. Such inheritances include money, but also inheriting professional and social networks, inheriting financial knowledge, institutional knowledge, etc.
Of course, people from historically marginalized groups have unique, rich, prosperous inheritances of their own that are worth acknowledging and celebrating. Those inheritances provide us wealth in ways that have often been suppressed and devalued in capitalist societies and oppressive systems. (More on this for another day!)
2) The circumstance we’re born and raised in don’t always determine or decide our path, but they do greatly influence our paths. One of the initial influences our circumstances have is simply our awareness or lack of awareness about what paths already exist, what other paths are possible, and even the pathways to those paths. There’s a lot to be said about being exposed to a variety of edifying, educative, perspective-expanding experiences throughout your childhood.
When I get to the week where I discuss health, I’ll also share how this applies as far as epigenetic inheritances.
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
Homework: Consider the compounding generational impact of what your parents, grandparents, and other ancestors had access to. How has that opened up, delayed, or previously denied you access to spaces, resources, knowledge, networks, opportunities, etc.?
Affirmation: I actively cultivate self-awareness as a foundation for my justice and equity work.
Colorism costs us a lot! It can cost us a sense of pride, solidarity, friendships, romantic options, freedom of expression… and MONEY!
Many people can be pretty patient and long-suffering with issues in their lives… until those issues start messing with their COINS!
If you think colorism is just a matter of dark-skinned girls believing that we are pretty, wait till you hear about the financial cost of colorism.
Today, I’m talking about dollars, so let me know if I’m making sense!
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Research on Colorism and Wage Gaps
As skin tone darkens, the wider the pay gap between white American workers and African American workers, and light-skinned African Americans earned as much as 12-14% more than dark-skinned African Americans. (Learn more about this article)
Light-skinned Latinx employees generally earn more income than dark-skinned Latinx workers and have higher overall socioeconomic status. (Learn more about this article)
Earnings for light-skinned or European Latinx employees exceeded earnings for dark-skinned or Indigenous Latinix employees by nearly 22%. (Learn more about this article)
Insights & Takeaways
1) You have to resolve color-based income disparities in order to achieve racial income equality.
I’ve probably said it every week, but most people fighting for racial equity and justice are spinning their wheels because they refuse to acknowledge and properly address colorism as an inherent variable in the racial equity equation.
2) There could be a host or reasons for these disparities. Most of the research has focused on determining if there is color-based inequality. We still need future research that investigates the causes of it.
Based on last week’s live about colorism in hiring, I hypothesize that some of the inequality stems from hiring practices as well as differences in how people are promoted and evaluated for pay raises and bonuses, etc.
There could also be differences in how job candidates approach negotiating their pay as well as biases in how employers negotiate in return.
For my academics and researchers out there, I would love to see a study like the ones done on gender asking such questions as: Are lighter skinned job candidates more likely to negotiate their pay? Are lighter skinned job candidates more likely to ask for a higher starting salary? And are employers more likely to agree to a higher starting salary for light skinned candidates than they are for dark-skinned candidates?
3) If some are paid less, that inherently means others are paid more, which incentivizes their complicity in the system.
When I started this post by saying how people get protective when it comes to their money–Sometimes people who benefit from oppressive systems, whether they created them or not, don’t want to rock the boat or risk “losing” certain comforts in the name of creating radical change.
The plot twist is that light-skinned BIPOC folks who tolerate less for others are also tolerating less for themselves. That’s because, again, “You have to resolve color-based income disparities in order to achieve racial income equality.”
4) We must remember that due to factors compounding interest, these gaps only grow wider with time. And the financial gaps have ripple effects on things like physical and mental health, which often has reciprocal effects on job performance, thus further entrenching economic disparities.
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
Homework 1: Do a wage or salary audit of your employees based on skin tone (not race) and see if you uncover a previously unrecognized income disparity within your organization that corresponds to skin tone. Then compare those incomes to industry averages.
Homework 2: Review my previous post on colorism in hiring and assess if these patterns correspond to hiring practices.
Affirmation: This doesn’t have to be a zero sum game.
When it comes to workplace equity and diversity, a lot of focus is given to hiring “the best person for the job” or hiring “top talent” or “the best fit” and so on. Researchers and equity advocates have shown that these frameworks are based on fallacious assumptions and are riddled with biases. In this article, I explain how colorism is a significant part of discrimination and inequality in recruiting and hiring.
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Research on Colorism in Hiring
For white people making hiring decisions, skin tone had greater influence on their choices than the applicant’s level of education and years of work experience. (Learn more about this article.)
In a study on “white colorism,” results showed that regardless of education, test scores, and other demographic factors–Lighter skinned African Americans and Latinos were significantly more likely to be seen as intelligent by white interviewers. (Learn more about this article.)
In many Latin American countries, top positions in business, academia, and politics are primarily filled with light-skinned people. Darker-skinned professionals experience less occupational prestige, while lighter-skinned employees attain higher status jobs. (Learn more about this article.)
Insights on Colorism in Hiring
Based on the type of research results I just shared, here are two key ideas and practical applications you can take away for your business.
You Can’t Create Racial Equity if You Ignore Colorism.
I have been saying this since the dawn of my platform, and today I want to emphasize this for hiring managers and recruiters. All of your work to achieve racial and ethnic diversity amounts to a hamster wheel if you aren’t factoring in the role that colorism plays in creating racial disparities in the workplace.
You Can’t Mitigate Racial Bias if You Ignore Colorism.
In a future article, I will explore this in more detail when I discuss customer service and racial profiling. In the context of recruiting and hiring, however, we have to question a lot of assumptions about which members of a racial group we deem:
more “professional”
a better “fit” for the company
more “educated”
more “approachable” or “friendly”
having “top talent”
having “great potential”
etc.
Here’s What to Do:
1) If you’re ever in a training, meeting, or just a casual conversation about racial equity or racial bias, bring up the element of colorism. Ensure that it’s embedded into the content.
2) Ask yourself and your hiring colleagues: Am I or Are We raising the bar for this darker-skinned candidate? Are we requesting additional information or more “proof of competency” from them than we have for other candidates with lighter skin tones?
For Example: A few people recently sent me a video of a dark-skinned woman revealing that she had to go through 10 interviews to get the same position as her light-skinned friend who was only required to do 3 interviews.
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
Homework: See above!
Affirmation: I’m willing to question my current approach to hiring and reflect on my own biases so that I can create greater equity and diversity within my company.
Colorism in schools impacts the pipeline to the workforce, particularly for careers and jobs that require formal education and training.
Today, I’m sharing insights on how colorism impacts educational outcomes even before children ever begin formal education.
And sometimes we forget that schools are also workplaces! So a lot of what I’m discussing today can be applied to the workplace more broadly, not just educational institutions.
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Research on the School-to-Workforce Pipeline
Asian Americans and Latinos with lighter skin tones were significantly more likely to complete high school and transition to college, and those with darker skin tones were 21-26% less likely to attend college and earn a degree. These color-based disparities in educational attainment held true even for siblings, accounting for potential differences in home environment or socioeconomic class. (2016: Learn more about this article.)
Dark-skinned black girls were three times more likely to be suspended from school than light skinned black girls for the same infractions. For boys and girls alike, darker skin correlated with higher suspension rates for the same behavior despite comparable grades, home environments and school records. (2013: Learn more about this article.)
Here we should note the relationship between the school-to-workforce pipeline and the school-to-prison pipeline. School suspensions decrease the odds of completing school or thriving in school, and they simultaneously increase the odds of incarceration. Both of those effects create barriers to entering the workforce and restrict career opportunities.
Lighter skinned Latinx students reach higher levels of schooling on average than their Brown and Black Latinx counterparts due to class privilege, discriminatory practices against dark-skinned Latinx students, and favorable treatment toward students with light skin. Educators perceive dark-skinned Latinx students as less intelligent and have lower expectations for Brown and Black Latinx students. (2021: Learn more about this article.)
Deeper Insight: How These Color-Based Disparities Occur
Parental Privilege
If a student’s parents are also light-skinned, non-Black, or white, they directly benefit from having parents who are more privileged. This might look like greater socioeconomic opportunity, increased cooperation from school staff, and the benefit of simply having parents (or a parent) who does not have to manage the stress of racism or anti-blackness.
Conditioned Biases About Intelligence
This bias often starts with parents themselves who label their children as either smart or not. This can subtly and not so subtly influence the child’s educational self-esteem: bolstering the self-esteem for lighter children and wounding the self-esteem of darker children, often creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Some parents go further to actually invest greater resources, time, and energy into the education and enrichment of their lighter skinned children.
This bias continues once children attend school. Teachers, staff, and classmates continue to label students based on these widespread, conditioned beliefs. This impact snowballs.
I often tell the true story of fraternal twins who attended the school where I taught years ago. The darker-skinned twin had been labeled as less smart and tracked in remedial classes for years and had a littered disciplinary record. The lighter-skinned twin was an honor roll student with popularity among peers, teachers, and staff.
Conditioned Biases About Behavior
All of the above also applies to perceptions and stereotypes about “good kids” versus “bad kids” or “problem kids.” Parents start this even when children are merely toddlers. Teachers and administrators perpetuate this as well, being more tolerant of light-skinned students and magnifying any behaviors they perceive as troublesome from dark-skinned students.
The “Halo Error”
This is more commonly known as the “halo effect,” but I prefer the preciseness of “halo error” because it is indeed an error. Any parent, teacher, administrator, staff, or student who perceives lighter-skinned students as cuter, prettier, more handsome, etc. is also likely to attribute all sorts of other positive traits to that student, such as good behavior and higher intelligence. By the same token, if they perceive a student as “ugly” or “unattractive” they are more likely to attribute a host of other negative traits to that student.
I don’t have time to go into how colorism is also impacting the experiences and careers of teachers and other school staff, but I will be able to speak to this in the weeks to come as I focus more on the employee experience in general.
Recap: Colorism in schools impacts the pipeline to the workforce, particularly for careers and jobs that require formal education and training. And what I’ve discussed today can be applied to the workplace more broadly, because schools are also workplaces. I’ve shared how parental privilege, biases about intelligence and behavior, and the halo error contribute to color-based disparities between lighter students and darker students, even those from the same home or family.
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
Homework 1: Look for opportunities to sponsor or mentor a dark-skinned student. This could include scholarships, internships, additional tutoring, career counseling, or even just emotional support.
Homework 2: Get some rest! Find more time to really relax.
Affirmation: Today, I prioritize my rest and wellbeing.
How can you learn to recognize colorism in business, in organizations, in schools, in sports, in government, or other institutions?
Today I’m sharing one of the most common and most obvious ways that colorism manifests in corporate culture.
Today’s live is part of a larger series based on my eBook Corporate Colorism: Why Business Leaders Must Upgrade Their Antiracist Strategies. You can easily catch up and keep up with this series on LinkedIn.
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Without being proactive in addressing colorism, companies and organizations run the risk of creating what I call: “monochromatic diversity.”
I’ve spoken in previous live streams about being a “word nerd” and how much I love living language that evolves to help us articulate our reality. I like to think my use of the term “monochromatic diversity” is part of that human legacy.
I don’t remember exactly when or how I learned the term “monochromatic,” but it’s most often applied to art and design when a color scheme consists of the same color or various shades and tints of the same color.
Monochromatic Diversity happens when a group is racially and ethnically diverse, yet all or most members of the group have the same or very similar skin tones.
In corporate and business structures, we often see instances of monochromatic diversity increase the higher up the organizational chart you go. So supervisors, managers, directors, department heads, principals, partners, executives or C-Suite.
Monochromatic Diversity typically occurs due to a combination of factors:
During the hiring and promotion process, many people have positive bias in favor of those with lighter skin tones and negative bias against those with darker skin tones.
The impact of colorism in the school-to-workforce pipeline bolsters opportunities for lighter skinned individuals while simultaneously creating more obstacles for those with darker skin.
Standard practices for gathering demographic data prioritize racial and ethnic identity and obscure the intersection of skin tone.
Because companies, institutions, and organizations focus on what I call “check box” identities that can easily be selected on forms and surveys, they may very well perceive that their workplace is diverse. But that perception is limited to a narrow set of broad categories.
Our failure to address colorism as a society is a significant reason we’ve struggled to make greater strides toward racial justice because colorism means racial progress is not evenly distributed throughout an entire race.
It has primarily been and continues to be people with the lightest skin tones who’ve collectively seen the most gains over the years, while people within that race who have the darkest skin tones have not seen the same degree of progress, if any.
Thus, even if we solve racial and ethnic discrimination, unless we address colorism, the socioeconomic hierarchy will still look exactly the same as it does now.
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
Homework: Identify instances of monochromatic diversity. Then identify the person most likely to create change and inform them about it. If that person is you, then you know what to do!
Affirmation: I am becoming more aware of colorism, and I practice speaking up about it.
Even when we see positive or affirming representations of dark-skinned people, they most often include:
Cisgender
Heterosexual
Male
Thin/Athletic Body Types (not as much so for men)
Thin/Chiseled features
Straight Hair
Etc.
In other words, if there’s representation of a dark-skinned person, they typically are/have to be as conventionally accepted as possible in all other ways.
And this, is not good enough for me. It’s not good enough for US! Because if you’re part of the Colorism Healing Crew, then Intersectional is What We Do!
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Colorism, like all issues, is intersectional, meaning the outcomes of colorism can either be mitigated or exacerbated by other parts of our experiences and identities. Here are a few of the most common intersections people identify as impacting their experiences of colorism.
Gender– Colorism impacts people of all genders but has a disproportionately negative impact of women.
Facial Features– Featurism is the hierarchy based on eye color and shape, nose size and shape, lip size and shape, and overall facial shape and structure.
Hair– People with afro hair textures experience more negative consequences of colorism than those with straighter hair textures. While the terms texturism and hairism are very new, I propose the following definitions:
Texturism- hierarchy based on hair texture or the density and nature of the hair’s natural curl
Hairism- includes texturism and discrimination based on hairstyle (i.e. braids, cornrows, locs, Bantu knots, and afros)
BodyType– Those with larger bodies or stigmatized body types experience more negative consequences of colorism.
Class– Higher socioeconomic status helps individuals compensate for the negative impact of colorism.
Race– Anti-Blackness plays a huge role in the global and cross-cultural framework of colorism. Therefore, even lighter skinned Black people experience forms of discrimination that members of other races do not.
Immigration– Just among immigrants, those with darker skin tones and those who are Black face more discrimination than other immigrants. Who more easily “assimilates”? Not that assimilation is or should be the goal, but for some it’s not even an option.
2 Examples for Brands & Businesses:
Marketing & Casting- It’s more common to see darker skinned men or masculine individuals. And they’re most often paired with or partnered with a woman or feminine individual who is lighter-skinned than they are. And dark-skinned women who are represented are typically thin, able bodied, and cis-gender.
Leadership/Senior Management- You have darker-skinned people who are either men or non-Black or both.
My vision is to have better representations of more diverse dark-skinned people.
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
HOMEWORK: Map your intersections, and identify which ones are most often a form of systemic privilege and which ones are most often subject to systemic marginalization.
AFFIRMATION: I am now becoming more aware of the many facets that shape who I am.
The post-colonial period is considered to start in the 1940s when several countries around the world were rising up, resisting colonial European regimes, and fighting for and starting to gain independence or sovereignty.
For my academics, I have to say that this discussion is not based on post-colonial theory. I’m just using that to frame a specific span of time.
When we talk about that period of history, many people born during that time are still alive. It might be you, your parents, or at least your grandparents who lived through this particular historical period.
Today, I’m just whetting our appetites by briefly sharing some of the forms of colorism in the United States during this time period.
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(Full Transparency, I thought about calling my live stream, “A Brown Bag on Brown Bags.”)
Additional Context:
The context for this is that during slavery, mixed-race descendants of white, male colonialists and enslaved Black women were more likely to be given an education or to be taught a trade. And they were more likely to be manumitted or set free.
So during slavery, there was a growing social class of “free people of color” or “free Black people” who were largely mixed race and lighter skinned.
Those privileges compounded for generations born after slavery. So the advantage of possibly being freed during slavery, access to education, and sometimes property or inheritance, etc. gave many of these mixed-race people a head start post-slavery.
This is why during Reconstruction, the period just after slavery and before Jim Crow, when historians say there was actually a lot of positive advancements and accomplishments for Black Americans—nearly all of that progress was made by lighter skinned mixed-race people because they had the benefit of already being in position to do so.
Many of these people started to intentionally form a social class of their own, with social networks, organizations, clubs, schools, churches, events, neighborhoods, even their own marriage market. This was in many cases intended to be and very often viewed as and operating as a separate middle class of people between Black Americans and Non-Black Americans.
Blue Veins & Brown Bags:
So I titled this week’s talk “Blue Veins and Brown Bags” because this phenomenon of creating a separate class of people included groups called “Blue Vein Societies” where acceptance required that your skin be light enough to show the blue veins under your skin.
They also used the Brown paper Bag Test, which required that your complexion be lighter than a paper bag in order to be accepted as a member of their communities. Even if there were no literal paper bags present, this ideology was reflected in the makeup of these communities.
A similar test was the Comb Test, where they had to be able to pass a fine-tooth comb through your kitchen without it getting caught. That’s an early example of texturism.
Exceptions were made if you were darker skinned but wealthy, or in the case of some schools, if you were skilled enough at sports (according to Mathew Knowles).
So, I’ve said in a previous live stream that light-skinned and mixed-race people, collectively, have not been innocent, unassuming bystanders in colorism. They have actively leveraged it for their own benefit.
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
HOMEWORK: Talk to someone from a different generation than you about colorism.
AFFIRMATION: I take responsibility for my legacy. I choose to be remembered as someone who stood for justice.
Expounding on last week’s post about the colonial history of colorism, I want to rewind the clock even farther back and explore some of the skin tone hierarchies that existed prior to the colonial era.
Humans have always noticed difference. It’s part of what makes the ecosystem of life so rich and robust.
But humans are rarely neutral about these differences. It seems we are wired to sort things based on perceived difference or similarity. Which doesn’t have to be inherently bad.
The problem stems from sorting things and people into hierarchies.
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I’m not even hating on the existence of hierarchies in the natural world or hierarchies born from biological needs. There is an actual hierarchy of biological, psychological needs.
Oxygen is a far greater priority than toothpaste, for example. You can survive without brushing your teeth, but you can’t survive without breathing. And brushing your teeth would take priority over putting on makeup, or in my case, picking out my afro!
And so it goes deeper than that when we talk about oppressive social hierarchies because these social hierarchies are unnatural and therefore have to be created and reinforced through violence, rape, genocide, economic cheating, political fraud, and all sorts of emotional and psychological trauma.
Many of the precolonial skin tone hierarchies around the world were tied to socioeconomic class. Having darker or tanned skin represented having to work many hours outdoors. In contrast, those who spent less time working outdoors, or those who didn’t have to work at all, typically had lighter complexions for lack of sun exposure.
Related to this, but not directly correlated to labor conditions, are regional dynamics where, for example, northern Indians generally have lighter skin than Indians from the south. And there have been social hierarchies and caste systems that map onto skin tone differences.
What we know about the evolution of human skin tones is that as people settled farther from the equator, they evolved to produce less melanin. But we must always remember that dark skin is the source of all skin shades.
The closer in history we get to the present day, the faster skin tones change across generations because of increased mixing of peoples. The industrial revolution has placed more manual labor indoors. And migration across regions has significantly increased.
For those reasons, the historical patterns discussed above have become less pronounced, but the hierarchies have become more pronounced due to the impact of colonialism.
Finally, I want to reiterate that these precolonial patterns of skin tone stratification or skin tone hierarchies, challenges the idea that colorism is a byproduct of racism. Rather, racial formation has historically relied on skin tone as a primary indicator of difference. In these ancient cultures, long before the concept of race as we know it today was ever conceived, there was colorism, or hierarchies and value systems based on skin tone differences.
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
Homework: Start a conversation about colorism with someone who has a different ethnic or cultural background than you.
Affirmation: I have been shaped by the past, but I am not defined by the past.
This post is part of an ongoing series based on my ebook Corporate Colorism: Why Business Leaders Must Upgrade Their Antiracist Strategy. If you’re a studious student who wants to read ahead before class, you can purchase theCorporate Colorism ebook, or download a free PDF resource.
We must recognize that modern-day forms of intraracial colorism are either rooted in or reinforced by the interracial history of colonialism.
However, there’s another truth that challenges the typical notion that colorism is merely a subsidiary outcome or tactic of racism:
Race is a social construct, but skin tone is a biological fact with socially constructed meanings, one of which is race itself. -Dr. Sarah L. Webb
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Interracial colorism perpetuated by European colonialists against indigenous people on other continents was a strategy to reinforce the notion of their own superiority in constructing the concept of whiteness.
The mere fact that races are widely classified by colors is indicative of the role that skin tone has played in the social construction of race.
“The first difference which strikes us is that of colour…. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white … preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in that immoveable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form… Besides those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of race.” -Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson’s quote exposes a few things relevant to this conversation:
Physical features, especially color and hair, were core factors in defining racial categories, and assigning value and asserting social hierarchies based on those physical features.
The entire project of constructing race was a tool for asserting and maintaining hegemonic oppression. In order to validate their notion of superiority as “white” people, they have to enforce a hierarchy that values “non-white” people based on how similar or how different they are to “white” people, physically and in other ways, or based on how much European ancestry they have, etc. (i.e. colorism and related systems).
Constructing ideologies about beauty is inherent to racism and white supremacist oppression. Beauty is not a trivial distraction. It has and continues to be a primary channel for reinforcing white-supremacist ideology and hegemony.
Obviously, this brief article is not meant to reflect all of colonial history. I wanted to underline a less often discussed aspect of history, which is the ways skin color and hair were essential in constructing our modern-day notions of race itself. So it should not be surprising to us that skin tone continues to matter in tandem with racial hiearchies.
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
HOMEWORK: Recall a time when learning something about history helped you better understand the present. What was the lesson?
AFFIRMATION: I seek to understand the past so I can be more empowered in the present.
This post is part of an ongoing series based on my ebook Corporate Colorism: Why Business Leaders Must Upgrade Their Antiracist Strategy. If you’re a studious student who wants to read ahead before class, you can purchase theCorporate Colorism ebook, or download a free PDF resource.
One of the most common colorism myths is that white people aren’t colorist or that it’s only an issue within our own communities.
This myth is one of the reasons people assume colorism is a less important issue. They think the only issue we face in the larger world outside our individual communities is racism.
But we are just as likely to experience colorism outside of our communities as racism.
And actually, many things we attribute to racism are actually better explained through a lens of colorism.
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When colorism happens within a particular racial or ethnic group it’s called intraracial-colorism, and when it happens across different racial groups it’s called interracial-colorism.
People not only place greater value on lighter-skinned members of their own race, they often place greater value on lighter skinned people of other races. The logic of colorism is that lighter skin is inherently better regardless of racial identity.
This does not mean they value light-skinned people of other races more favorably than members of their own race. It simply means they perceive lighter-skinned members of any race as inherently better than darker-skinned members of that race.
EXAMPLES:
White employer assumes light skinned Black American, Latinx, or Asian job applicants are more intelligent and more professional than dark-skinned Black American, Latinx, or Asian candidates.
Asian schoolteacher penalizes dark-skinned Black students more harshly than lighter skinned Black students.
African American police officer assumes dark-skinned Latinx people are more likely to be “criminals” than light skinned Latinx people.
The reason we have to acknowledge BOTH forms of colorism is because interracial colorism plays a HUGE part in the systemic inequalities and disparities between lighter and darker-skinned people within our race.
In order to dismiss, deny, or downplay the true impact and significance of colorism, folks try to limit it to just the Black community, or just among people of color toward their own races.
But once you acknowledge interracial colorism, you’re forced to confront the reality that colorism is not just an interpersonal issue, but that it’s a systemic problem that creates structural inequality at the societal level.
We are just as likely to experience colorism from other races as we are to experience racism from other races. Once people recognize that colorism is not just an interpersonal issue amongst us, but that other folks perpetuate colorism toward us as well, then you’ll understand how it’s a systemic problem that creates structural inequality at the societal level.
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
HOMEWORK: No homework this week! I’m feeling benefic! (Venus-Jupiter Conjunction)
AFFIRMATION: I open my mind to new insights, and I give myself permission to change my perspective.
One of the main ways colorism differs from racism is that colorism is a spectrum of privilege. This means that at the micro level, it is often contextual. Privilege is not all-or-nothing.
In one setting a person might have the lightest skin tone, and in a different setting that same person could have the darkest skin tone. And many people find themselves in varying positions along that spectrum.
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Racism vs. Colorism: Beyond the Binary
The lens of racism most often encourages either/or, binary thinking that flattens the experience of racial group.
I love the framework of colorism because it helps us move away from binary thinking and disaggregate experiences of oppression. That’s important because a more precise understanding of problems enables more effective and strategic solutions.
Several research studies explain how there’s a tiered system of color-based inequality that is not binary. They most often use three tiers of dark, medium, and light. and sometimes 4-5 tiers. Here are some examples:
Bridging the Micro and the Macro
It’s important to keep this in mind when examining and addressing the individual and interpersonal consequences of colorism. A person doesn’t have to be the most marginalized to still experience a degree of marginalization. And a person certainly doesn’t have to be the most privileged to still experience high levels of privilege.
It’s also very crucial to link the micro experiences to the macro, systemic reality of how each of us is positioned within the broader spectrum of human skin tones around the globe. We can, for example, know that we have light-skinned privilege in a global context, even if we were shunned for being the darkest person in our home or local environment.
My hope is that lighter skinned people who experienced discrimination for not being “light enough” would use that experience to translate into a more empathetic understanding of the magnitude of what dark-skinned people have to endure, rather than using their experience to avoid owning their privilege.
The Pastry Line Analogy
Privilege is not all or nothing. It’s more like standing in a line. Even if you’re not first in line, you may still be ahead of several other people. If there are 100 people in line for an assortment of 99 donuts, every single position in line counts. The closer to the front, the more options you have. The further to the back, the fewer options you have. And if you’re last in line, you may be left with nothing at all.
Intersectionality Adds Further Dimensions
So far, for the sake of clarity in explaining the concept of a spectrum of privilege, I’ve isolated the axis of skin tone. However, this spectrum of privilege expands with an intersectional lens. So it’s possible for a dark-skinned person to make more money and have more career or social success than a light-skinned person, or for a dark-skinned woman to get married before a light-skinned woman.
However, we can always test for the persistence of a color based hierarchy by asking the questions: If she were dark-skinned, would she have been treated the same or gotten the same opportunities? If they were light-skinned, would they have seen even greater success or would they have been able to achieve the same level with less struggle?
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
HOMEWORK: Place yourself in The Pastry Line. How close to the front are you? The middle? The back? Remember to consider not just your local context, but the global and cross-cultural context as well.
AFFIRMATION: I am accountable for my position in The Pastry Line.
Language continuously evolves as our human reality evolves. As the widely beloved James Baldwin wrote in 1979:
“People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate. (And, if they cannot articulate it, they are submerged.)” –James Baldwin
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Prior to 2011, I had never heard of colorism. In the last 12 years, I’ve met dozens of people who all say that hearing the term “colorism” was an epiphany moment for them and the first time they knew there was language, a word, to describe what they had witnessed and experienced throughout their lives.
Evolving Terminology
Alice Walker is credited with coining the term colorism in her 1983 book, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. However, people have written about this phenomenon for over a century, using other terms such as: skin tone bias/prejudice, pigmentocracy, shadeism, color struck, and colorstruction.
When I began writing about colorism in 2011, I included discrimination based on other racialized physical traits—hair, nose, lips, and eyes—as inherently implicated in colorism. Since 2011, those forms of discrimination have received their own specific language: featurism, texturism, and hairism. Therefore, I will not collapse them into this specific examination, but I will clarify how they’re inherently implicated with colorism in my upcoming article on intersectionality.
The Definition of Colorism
Colorism is a societal system that privileges people with lighter skin and marginalizes people with darker skin.
Within the system of colorism, individuals and groups with lighter skin benefit from such things as:
explicit and implicit preference for light skin
compounding and generational advantages
norms and practices that cater to whiteness
designs and structures created for whiteness
Why Vocabulary Matters (and Why There is No Reverse Colorism)
The notion of reverse colorism is only possible if the person understands colorism as simply a matter of bullying or negative personal interactions.
As soon as one understands colorism as a societal system with an entrenched, society-wide hierarchy that has deep historical roots and far-reaching socioeconomic impact, it’s impossible to conceive of such a thing as “reverse colorism.”
I always use what I call “The Robin Hood Analogy”:
Poor people stealing from rich people is not reverse classism. It’s a form of backlash to classism.
We might consider a type of behavior wrong, but it does not mean that behavior constitutes the complete reversal or overturning of a societal system.
Lighter and Darker vs. Light and Dark: Nuance for All Shades
I think it’s most helpful to understand that instances of colorism can be contextual, and that the degree of privilege we have in the system of colorism falls along a spectrum rather than a binary.
Individual instances of colorism for many people can fluctuate when they have the darkest complexion in one context, the lightest complexion in another context, or have a medium complexion in yet another context. Understanding this helps us identify and elucidate specific instances of colorism.
And also, privilege is not all or nothing. It’s more like standing in a line. Even if you’re not first in line, you may still be ahead of several other people.
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
Homework: Try to recognize one new-to-you example of colorism. Don’t worry if “everyone else” is already aware of it. The only focus is on increasing your own awareness, whatever that might look like.
Affirmation: I understand the value of precision and nuance as useful tools to help me identify, assess, and address complex problems.
This post is part of a long series based on my new ebook, Corporate Colorism: Why Business Leaders Must Upgrade Their Anti-Racist Strategy. If you want to do the readings before class, you can purchase theCorporate Colorism ebook, or download a free PDF resource.
Anti-racist advocates who ignore or deny colorism are perpetuating the very system they claim to fight against. Anti-racist work simply does not work without an intersectional framework, and one of the primary pillars of any anti-racist work must be colorism.
This post kicks off a long series based on my new ebook, Corporate Colorism: Why Business Leaders Must Upgrade Their Anti-Racist Strategy. If you want to do the readings before class, you can purchase theCorporate Colorism ebook, or download a free PDF resource.
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I attended a panel on colorism several years ago. On the panel, there was a brown-skinned, Black woman scholar who was well-liked and respected among faculty and students and other academic circles. She had even authored and edited publications on colorism.
On the panel, she said (and I paraphrase): “It’s time to finally put this behind us so we can move on to the real issues and focus on more important things.”
One- She’s brown skinned, not dark-skinned, so that’s likely one reason she’s so easily dismissive.
Two- A lot of people jump on the colorism bandwagon when it’s convenient or when it’s trendy, but they ain’t really in the trenches.
A common and longstanding attitude among many prominent and historic anti-racist leaders, activists, scholars, and practitioners (including many of your faves!) is that colorism is a trivial distraction compared to racism. Many believe that focusing on race alone is necessary and sufficient to dismantle white-supremacist systems of oppression.
Those same individuals find themselves, shocked, frustrated, disappointed, even angry that the movement keeps spinning its wheels in the same old ruts. They fail to realize that colorism, the very thing they toss aside, is actually the lever necessary to gain traction.
A recent report by Catalyst adds to the body of research showing the impact of colorism, with specific focus on women in the workplace. Their findings show that “the darker a woman’s skin tone, the more likely she was to experience racism at work.”
As I’ve said before, as a dark-skinned Black woman, I don’t have the privilege of prioritizing racism over colorism because If we “solve” racism without simultaneously dismantling colorism, the distribution of systemic power and privilege in society will LOOK exactly the same as it looks now. People who look like me, even in a world without racial categories, will still be marginalized and pushed to the bottom of the social hierarchy because of colorism.
Let me say it a little differently: As a dark-skinned Black woman, I don’t have the privilege to make colorism a secondary issue. To the extent that someone is dismissive of colorism, consider how they might be positioned in that system and thus privileged enough to ignore it.
Since I started this work over a decade ago, I’ve recognized that a primary obstacle to incorporating colorism as a key component of anti-racist strategies is the lack of awareness and critical understanding of the issue. The singular goal of the ebook and this companion series is to provide accessible knowledge and information for business leaders to grasp the meaning, the scope, and the stakes of colorism within a corporate context.
I frequently encounter individuals who assume they “get it” because of their personal experiences. However, personal perspective is usually insufficient to fully grasp the scope of colorism as a societal system of oppression. While many people reading this will have unique life experiences related to colorism, this text presents an intersectional, cross-cultural, historical, and global framework supported with research that can be adapted and applied for any business context.
Though this text is thorough, it is still brief and meant only to present key concepts of colorism as it pertains to business practices. Readers should be aware that colorism is not limited to the examples and research presented here. If you’d like to continue your study of colorism, there are many resources that address the issue beyond business.
The level of awareness and understanding is merely the first step, but it is a crucial and foundational step that mustn’t be skipped or glossed over. Designing a strategy for solving the problem requires a genuine understanding of the problem.
If you engage with me throughout this series, you will fully understand why there is no anti-racism without anti-colorism.
The ebook and this series of live lectures cover 22 topics. As each live lecture and corresponding article is published, I will return to this post and link to them so that you can find the entire series in one place.
Corporate Colorism: Why Business Leaders Must Upgrade Their Anti-Racist Strategy Table of Contents
Why Anti-Racist Work Doesn’t Work Without a Colorism Lens
Defining Colorism
Understanding the Spectrum of Privilege
Identifying Two Types of Colorism
Historical Context of Colorism
Global and Cross-Cultural Dimensions of Colorism
Intersectionality
Monochromatic Diversity
Colorism in the Educational Pipeline
Colorism Biases in Hiring
Colorism in Wage Disparities
Generational Cycles of Colorism
EEOC Discrimination Lawsuits on Skin Tone Discrimination
Evaluation and Promotion
Colorist Microaggressions
Health and Wellness
Colorism in Marketing and Branding
The Visual Rhetoric of Colorism
The Verbal Rhetoric of Colorism
Colorism in Customer Service and Profiling
My Unique Framework for Addressing Colorism and Other Social Issues
The 4 Steps to Creating Sustainable Change
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
HOMEWORK: Ask as many people as you can this week if they’ve heard of colorism. If they have, ask if they know how it relates to business.
AFFIRMATION: I am ready to test my commitment to the things I believe I care about. If you believe you care about anti-racism work, examine your track record for addressing colorism.
The Woman King has been widely celebrated and honored by audiences, film critics, and reputable industry organizations, including the legendary NAACP Image Awards.
And yet it did not receive a single Oscar nomination, not a single one. This is significant because, whether we like it or not, an Oscar nomination, much less an Oscar win, is still considered the highest form of recognition in the industry, and it does influence the trajectory of films and acting careers.
It’s as if the Oscars have said: Hold up now, Black Women, especially dark-skinned Black women, yall getting too big for britches and should learn to stay in your place.
So the real reason I’m discussing this is because the Oscars’ snub of The Woman King has sent a very clear message that “The Academy” will not recognize any films that dare to challenge or threaten Hollywood’s white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy.
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I am returning to the topic of colorism and Misogynoir in Hollywood. More specifically, I’m going to explain why I think the Oscars are quite frankly being vindictive because The Woman King represents what happens when Black women choose themselves, when Black women have the audacity to succeed without approval from gatekeepers, and when Black women decide to be amazing despite insidious attempts at sabotage.
My critique of this situation is based on information from interviews about how the film was made and based on my analysis of the final product of the film itself.
Starting with the film itself, which I’ve done an analysis of before:
We get an ensemble cast of dark-skinned Black women as principle actors and an entire narrative woven around their inner and outer lives. Which is unheard of for movies with this level of production and global recognition.
Those dark-skinned Black women are honored, revered, respected, admired, and loved within their community, amongst each other, and by other Black men.
We get to see those dark-skinned Black women in the full-range of their humanity rather than watered down, one-dimensional, palatable, or crude stereotypes.
There’s no sugar coating the problems and oppressive dynamics that existed across African cultures, including misogyny and violence against women and complicity in the colonial slave trade. Because we can love and celebrate Africa without pretending like it’s a perfect utopia.
The film portrays the ways that light-skinned and mixed-race people were often positioned as a middle class between white Colonizers and Black Africans.
There are absolutely ZERO white saviors. All of the white characters are portrayed as cruel, and there are no white characters that white audiences can watch and feel better about themselves.
At the end, Black people massacre the white folks, destroy their property, and free their captured kinfolk.
Behind The Scenes:
Women had leading roles behind the camera as well, including producing, writing, directing, and costuming.
And I want to highlight Viola Davis’s leadership and advocacy in particular. She’s someone who’s not just in Hollywood for the fame and money. She’s leaving a legacy and leaving an impact in the industry that goes far beyond just her individual career. She’s not just playing the game, she’s changing the game for herself and for dark-skinned Black women yet to come.
Apparently it was difficult to assemble a team because other major players were afraid to get on board or be associated with the movie. They didn’t believe a film with all dark-skinned Black women leading could have such huge success.
Other executives wanted to insert a prominent MALE lead, but the core team fought to keep it women-centered.
There was pressure around hairstyling and the team had to fight to keep it as authentic as possible.
Contrasting the snub of The Woman King with the Embrace of Wakanda Forever.
The contrast in how each of these movies has been received by the Oscars is intentional. It underscores their message that only films that stay within the bounds of what white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchal gatekeepers feel comfortable with will be awarded by this institution.
In other words, whether you like Wakanda Forever or not, it does not challenge or threaten the identity or the self-concept of those gatekeepers. It does not challenge the white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy of the industry.
For one, it was primarily MEN in charge of making this film, and that automatically makes a huge difference in Hollywood.
And going even deeper than that, my analysis of the film leads me to believe that Wakanda Forever is insidiously anti-Black and perpetrates a very recognizable brand of misogynoir.
I’ve already addressed the issue of using dark-skinned Black women’s physical features for comedic relief in my article about the scenes poking fun at Okoye’s bald head.
But the overall tone of the film felt like: See, Wakanda isn’t so special after-all. In fact, Wakanda’s lighter skinned rivals could wipe them off the map if they really wanted to. This is primarily based on the complete uprooting of the Wakandan origin story. Why couldn’t Namor and his people have their own origin story?
I was frustrated that a film titled Wakanda Forever: 1) Gave at least 50% of meaningful screen time to NOT Wakanda, and 2) Wakanda was actually made to look quite feeble, week, and insignificant in contrast to their lighter skinned rivals. The film felt like it should have been called The Rise of Namor. And the lighter-skinned civilization was portrayed with a lot more seriousness, dignity, and respect than the Wakandans were given overall.
RECAP: The Oscars’ snub of The Woman King has sent a very clear message that “The Academy” will not recognize any films that dare to challenge or threaten Hollywood’s white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy.
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
HOMEWORK: On the night of March 12, instead of watching the Oscars, stream The Woman King instead.
It’s so common to see statements and hashtags declaring that “Representation Matters!”
But we don’t often enough explain how or why it matters so much.
Representation Matters because the way people are represented in society directly impacts how they are treated in society.
Physical, material, and political violence against a group is always preceeded and enabled by negative propaganda, harmful narratives, and dehumanizing visual and verbal rhetoric about that group.
And by “representation” I mean both the misrepresentation and the absence or lack of representation.
As I’ve said before it’s both quantity and quality of representation that matters.
When it comes to creating justice around colorism, immerse yourself in representations of dark-skinned Black women created by people who actually LOVE Dark-Skinned Black Women.
Immerse yourself in images of people loving dark-skinned Black women and spread those images far and wide.
When was the last time you’ve seen an image of people loving dark-skinned Black women and girls?
When was the last time you created and/or shared such an image yourself?
This is your homework!
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
The “bald-headed” jokes in Wakanda Forever ruined the movie for me. I immediately cringed and rolled my eyes early in the film when M’Baku calls General Okoye a “bald-headed demon.” I immediately thought, Yep, I can definitely see a Black man writing that line and directing that scene. It was the only line in the film that elicited an audible laugh from the white guy sitting on my row, which speaks to the ways Black humor by Black men in particular panders to the white male gaze by using dark skinned Black Women for their punchlines.
But that terrible line wasn’t enough for them. They created an extended dialogue later in the scene where Okoye and Shuri find the black girl scientist at MIT. We see one Black woman look at another Black woman in disgust and say “You need to be mindful of how your look, with that ash on your head.” And it was meant to be another cheap joke about a dark skinned Black woman’s looks and her physical appearance. Scenes like these implicitly teach that our looks are something to be self-conscious or anxious about or ashamed of.
This movie reminded me that dark skinned Black Women can’t count on being safe even in Black spaces. Even in a movie supposedly celebrating Black people and Black culture, we get a double dose of one of the most played out attacks on Black Women. It reminded me that the Black male gaze is not inherently safe and far too often hostile for dark-skinned Black women.
And what really shines through the lens of colorism for me is the contrast between the world’s response when Kris Rock merely alluded to Jada Pinket’s bald head with a J I Jane reference. Though I denounced his joke and all others like it after the Oscars, what he said was not as negative or demeaning as what’s said in Wakanda Forever. And yet contrast allll the posts, memes, backlash, and think pieces in support of the petite light skinned actress. Versus the silence in response to the same issue for a dark skinned actress. Most folks didn’t even notice or bat an eye during those scenes. Perhaps we’re so conditioned and desensitized to hair jokes and to seeing dark-skinned women as punchlines.
Many people defended Will Smith for slapping someone in defense of a Black woman. But like I originally said after the Oscars, to quote myself: “I don’t see [the slap] as a moment of redemption for ALL Black women. Cus colorism, classism, sizeism [and featurism] have repeatedly shown most of us that ain’t NOBODY sticking their necks out to defend US.”
So many dark skinned girls and women have specifically looked to Danai Gurira and her role as Okoye for affirming representations of ourselves. So the scenes I’m talking about felt like a slap in the face to me and all dark skinned women who endure not just “bald-headed” jokes but all the myriad other degrading shots at our physical appearance. I was extremely hurt and disappointed by those scenes but sadly I wasn’t surprised. Part of my sadness is in knowing that those scenes will continue on spreading harmful narratives as they are etched into the Marvel cinematic universe for generations to come. And part of my sadness comes from the fact that this movie was supposed to be an opportunity for us to get free of that. If Wakanda Forever is supposed to represent the best of Black representation in Hollywood and even it can’t shake off this particular form of misogynoir, then what are we doing???
Stop using dark-skinned Black Women as comic relief.
If you’re interested in my speaking, training, or consulting services, please contact me here.
P.S. 2 things make a coincidence. 3 things are a SIGN. Since seeing the movie on Monday evening, I had 3 distinct moments on Tuesday where I hit my hand, stubbed my toe, and dinged my elbow. I learned this can be a manifestation of repressed anger and frustration. I was consciously aware that I felt angry and frustrated about the film and the context surrounding it. So I wrote this around 2:00am Hawaii Time because it wouldn’t let me sleep. My body was alerting me and inviting me to consciously and intentionally channel my anger and frustration in a healthier way, rather than turn it inward on myself. This is the story of Mars Rx in my first house. So I’m writing this as a collective teachable moment about colorism hairism and misogynoir. And I’m writing this to save and to heal myself.
