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.
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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 the Corporate Colorism ebook, or download a free PDF resource.