April 13, 2016 • 48 mins
Why does lighter skin improve women's chances of getting through school, getting a job and getting married? Cristen and Caroline explore the historical roots, repercussions and cross-cultural shades of colorism around the world.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you From how stupp
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, And today we're talking about colorism,
which might sound like a phenonym for racism, but indeed, no,
(00:24):
I think I think it's an aspect of racism. For sure,
it's under the racism umbrella, so to speak. Um, but
colorism has more to do uh. And I'm not even
speaking euphemistically when I say it has more to do
with shades honestly, Uh, skin tones, if one person is
(00:44):
darker than another in the same culture. Yeah, And listeners
might be wondering, like, why are two pasty skin Sorry, Caroline,
I hope you don't take that notes in the wrong way.
It's the hard truth we call we call pasty skin
pasty skin stuff I ever told you. Um So, why
why would we be talking about this issue? Well, first
(01:07):
of all, because fascy skinned white folks like ourselves absolutely
perpetuate this kind of violence. And I think it's also
helpful for understanding all the very layers of racism and
its complications, and also how privilege works, the ways that
(01:27):
we all moved through the world, often in different ways
depending on all of our different attributes, including the very
shade of our skin. Yeah. So, whereas racism is discrimination
often systemic, institutionalized discrimination against people based on their ethnicity,
colorism is more the unconscious and institutionalized prejudice against people
(01:52):
based on the color of their skin. And like I
was saying, it exists even within ethnic groups, and it's
really tied into the internalization of a lot of those
racist factors in culture. Yeah. So it exists around the world, um,
but particularly in sight of past European colonization, So you
(02:12):
have that internalization of a white supremacist hierarchy, but it
also in exists in places where colonization did not exist,
So you have places like the Far East where whiteness
also was valued. But um, I think it's uh, it's
it's foolish to assume that anywhere you go in the world,
(02:36):
a desire for lighter skin is a desire for the
whiteness that you and I embodied, Caroline, right, because I mean,
we talked about this in our last episode on tanning,
that people in certain Asian countries don't necessarily want to
have lighter skin because they want to be white or
because their country once had white people in it or
(02:58):
over it, but more or because of that issue that
we talked about of the class division of people in
lower working classes, uh, participating in manual labor outside there
in the sun, so their skin is naturally darker versus
people of higher classes who did not have to work outside. Yeah.
So if you go to Southeast Asia, for instance, a
(03:20):
wider complexion was seen as more noble and aristocratic. But
I almost wonder caroline as a side note here, if
wider and lighter should not be used as synonymously as
they often are, because I feel like once we start
saying wider, it does put in our heads like the
idea of like, oh, they want to look like you
and me, But it's more the lightness factor. For instance,
(03:44):
if we talk about people in India, there is an
issue with skin bleaching that goes on there, also in
many other places around the world. But there was an
article about skin bleaching in India which emphasized how the
desire isn't to look European but rather for a hue
(04:06):
that is listed on matchmaking websites over there as wheedish,
as in like wheat the grain whedish, And I just
mentioned that to help contextualize a little bit the different
forms that colorism can take. And I think it's interesting
to note too that you know, colorism isn't really discussed
(04:28):
as loudly and as broadly on the national or global
internet stage, if you will, um as racism is because
a lot of people perceive this to be an in
group issue, sort of almost like dirty laundry. We don't
want to talk about how you know, here we are
battling racism toward our group, and yet we're squabbling or
(04:51):
just feeling less than because of the shade of our
skin color. And this was something too that came up
in a busfeed conversation a little while back with a
round table of its Latino writers, and one of them,
Javier Moreno, said, I've always felt the colorism and race
is the biggest elephant in the room and the Latino
community both are extremely prevalent, yet nobody ever talks about it.
(05:16):
And I think to you clearly that this is one
of those issues that people also quickly dismiss as political correctness.
In quotes, it's like, oh, here we go, here's another
thing we gotta worry about. It's like, yeah, no, let's
pay attention to these things and be decent humans. For instance,
when we started reading about colorism, the first thing that
(05:41):
came to my mind was from February when the quote
unquote hot convict Jeremy Meeks's mug shot went viral. It
was this lighter skinned African American man with blue eyes
and yes, he's very attractive, he does look like a model,
and women went berzerko online over him. At one point
(06:04):
Glamour magazine nicknamed him Felon Bay And this, this right here,
it's colorism because as we will talk about more, and
studies and statistics clearly show skin color absolutely impacts how
you were treated in the legal system and also how
(06:24):
you were simply perceived when you're walking down the street,
like whether you were perceived as more trustworthy, more bayworthy.
I mean, like you said, this isn't an issue of
political correctness. We're not just bleeding heart liberals who were
looking for something to be offended about, which is what
I feel like we get accused of sometimes, um because
(06:46):
for instance, look at Viola Davis. Uh, there's a quote
from her that we found where she said the paper
bag test is still very much alive and kicking. Yeah,
so we're not just making the stuff up people. UM.
I think one of the most famous and infamous at
the same time academic examples demonstrating how colorism works is
(07:12):
uh the seven Doll experiment, and it was specifically designed
to demonstrate the impact of segregation on African American kids.
And if I'm remembering it correctly, the study setup was
essentially bringing young African American kids into a room and
presenting them with dolls, um, a white doll and then
(07:36):
a black doll, which the researchers had to make because
a black doll did not exist on the mainstream market
at the time, and they asked the kids about their
impressions of the dolls, the characteristics they would associate with it,
which one they would rather play with, and overwhelmingly the
black children preferred the white doll and also attributed more
(07:57):
positive traits to it. If we've asked forward then to
The study was replicated with both white and children of
color and found similar results of white bias, although the
bias among the black children had diminished somewhat but was
(08:18):
still present. Um, but the white kids absolutely exhibited it
across the board, and Kristin I believe it was also
in that study that either in addition to dolls or
in place of actual physical baby dolls, they showed the
kids um a spectrum of five paper dolls, five children
(08:39):
little cartoons ranging from very pale to very dark with
shades in between, and they were asking children questions like
who's the smartest, who's the best behaved, who's the kindest,
who's the most fun things like that. And they did
find that white children were quicker to us I'm those
(09:00):
more positive characteristics to the white or the lighter shades UM,
and the black children were more open to yes, ascribing
positive traits to the black dolls, but also being open
to not everybody is positive or negative based on their color. Well,
in speaking of kids, there was a piece in The
(09:22):
New York Times not too long ago which reported on
a study from Villanova University which found that darker skinned
black girls in the classroom were three times likelier to
be suspended than their lighter skinned female classmates. Yeah, it
was a horrifying article, uh, incredibly eye opening um to
(09:43):
read about first of all, young kids being caught up
in the legal system for basically disciplinary issues rather than
just maybe going to the principle. But the fact that
it was so clearly and statistically divided along um color lines.
And I'm not just talking race and white versus black
(10:04):
or whatever, but I mean even to the point of
between black children the girls who had darker skin going
to the office more often. And it follows as we
grow up. So there was a study from two thousand
six out of the University of Georgia which found lighter
skinned African Americans were perceived as more employable than darker
skinned African Americans, even if they had more education and
(10:29):
more work experience. Yeah, and that translates, as you might imagine,
to the legal system. And this is uh from an
interview with shankra Vedantam, our favorite NPR correspondent, host of
a Hidden Brain podcast. Shanker. We love him. He doesn't
know who we are, but we're but we Yeah. Kristen
and I discovered before this podcast that we both get
(10:50):
so excited when shankers on NPR. So if anyone knows
shankra Vedantam, please drop him a line on our behalf. Yeah,
we say hi. Now back to the podcast. But Shawn
I was telling the New York Times that darker skinned
African American defendants and now these are grown ups are
twice as likely to receive the death penalty as lighter
skin defendants for equivalent crimes. And if that doesn't speak
(11:14):
to just inherent biases that people carry around, I don't
know what does. Well. And in the example that Vedantem
was giving to the New York Times, there was much
less evidence that was used to convict the darker skin
defendant as well. So it says, if the color of
our skin also raises or lowers the burden of proof. Yeah,
(11:37):
and if we look at the flip side of this,
you know, let's get let's talk about something fun like money, right,
that's so great? Well, Shanka would say, slowly roll, because
other researchers found that lighter skinned Latinos, for instance, earned
five thousand dollars more annually than darker skinned Latinos in
the US. And we can also see this too in
(11:59):
Paula ticks. Yeah. So, political science research has found that
while racism did cost Obama some votes in two thousand eight,
uh colorism cast him as a lighter skinned African American
man more favorably than had he been darker skinned, And
there were some attack ads that the study highlighted that intentionally,
(12:24):
Um either juxtaposed him next to um, another African American
with darker skin, or shaded his skin even darker to
evoke those kinds of negative reactions. Well, don't you remember
that that's the same thing that happened with the O. J.
Simpson magazine cover during the trial that they was at
(12:47):
Time or news Week purposely purposely darkened his skin, and
it was a huge deal. I remember that. I remember
being in fifth or sixth grade and hearing like all
of the rigamarole that aim because of that, because they
had intentionally made him look what a little more dangerous,
a little blacker like a little more scary to white
(13:09):
mainstream America. Well, and I wonder too about how this
plays in with perceptions and the awful, awful racist things
that people have said about Michelle Obama. As you know,
her skin is darker than Barocks. And I don't know,
I just wonder if she were a lighter skin floatists
which she received the same kind of angry black woman
(13:34):
racist stereotyping that she has, because according to colorism research,
the answer would be no. I mean, of course it
would still be there, but maybe not as intense. So
the question then is why does this exists? I mean,
it's something that's cross cultural, it's intra ethnic um and
(13:56):
it's a dynamic that isn't just easily explained as, oh, well,
everyone wants to be us white people. So clearly this bias,
to put it lightly, exists. But the question is why,
And the answer is something that we do not have
ten hours to go into in granular detail, because it
(14:16):
is something that's cross cultural, that's intra ethnic, that doesn't
have a simple answer, and also something that has been
historically perpetuated for centuries and two it's something that's only
recently receiving dedicated scholarship, and that was one reason um why.
(14:38):
Vetta Sanders Thompson contributed an essay to one of those
newer books about colorism called Shades of Difference. Yeah. She
wrote that every marginalized ethnic group has issues with physical identification,
which includes the color of their skin, physical features such
as color and texture of hair, contours of the face
and nose, body shape, all of these things things relate
(15:00):
to colorism. Skin color, she writes, is almost never considered
without some attention to these other physical features. So if
we look at colorism specifically in the United States of
course we have to talk about slavery. I mean, it's
obvious slave owners would divide enslaved people by skin tone,
with lighter skinned people likelier to work in the houses
(15:25):
and darker skinned slaves sent out to the fields. Um.
And it was also that division was also intentional to
try to turn groups of slaves against each other by
essentially establishing that hierarchy according to skin tone. Yeah. And
of course you have the issue of white slave owners
(15:49):
raping enslaved women. And the products of these unions were
children with lighter skin, and by virtue of their lighter
skin or by virtue of beinging essentially children of the
slave owner. Uh, they might receive more favorable treatment, maybe
even learning to read and write, and potentially eventually for
(16:10):
some of them being freed. Um and during reconstruction, historians
right that we immediately see lighter skinned African Americans immediately
benefiting from their skin tone, and that some of the
first black communities associations, schools, churches were exclusively made up
of lighter skinned African Americans. And it's this system of
(16:33):
colorism that lead to measures like the paper bag test,
which is what Viola Davis was referencing. Earlier. Yeah, so
the paper bag test was essentially if you take you know,
like a grocery bag and hold against your skin, you
had to be lighter than the bag in order to
gain you know, entrance or admission or membership into whatever
(16:54):
it was you were trying to get into. And this
also gets into a whole other conversation too that we're
not going to address in this podcast of passing. It's like,
if you could pass that test, you could literally possibly
pass as white. UM. There were also ruler tests and
comb tests that have been documented UM that sometimes took
(17:17):
place at those exclusively lighter skinned UM organizations or even
at churches where if a comb says hanging at the door,
that means that you have to be able to cleanly
run the comb through your hair, thus suggesting that it
is straight enough for you to gain entrants. And all
of this really exemplifies to how colorism and class are
(17:41):
inextricably linked. And of course this brings in issues too
of European colonization. UM. You have a similar color cast
system developing, for instance, UH with Spanish colonists in Latin
America privileging lighter skinned people with more European looking acial features,
and even today you still see those skin and class
(18:03):
link divisions existing among Mexicans and Mexican Americans. And we
see a similar effect that academics referred to as internal
colonialism at different sites of European colonization around the world.
So this is not something exclusive to the Western hemisphere
by any means um In fact, another point made in
(18:27):
an essay in Shades of Difference Wise skin color Matters
is how skin lightning in the Philippines, for instance, is
rooted in multiple layers of colonialism. So you have, yes,
Spanish and American colonialism, but also the rise of Chinese
and Spanish Mastizo middle classes. And then you just by
(18:49):
virtue of geography, you have that proximity too countries like China, Japan,
and Korea and all of the media coming from there
where all so that lighter skin is prized. So I mean,
that's why I say, like, we don't have ten hours
to completely unravel this topic, because it is so multifaceted. Yeah,
(19:12):
so let's take a look at some other examples of
how colorism acts as a discriminatory force within ethnic groups.
I mean, we've already talked about the socioeconomic stratification in
the African American community, I mean post slavery. You could
link the distribution of wealth among African Americans directly two
(19:32):
divisions and skin color. But then there's also this issue
of authenticity that research on colorism has unearthed as well,
because while lighter skin certainly affords social and economic privilege,
it's simultaneously marginalizes one's ethnic quote unquote authenticity. So if
(19:54):
we look, for instance, at the Black Power movement within
that group, lighter skin was se as less authentically black.
And Margaret Hunter, writing in an essay from Mills College,
says that for some people of color, authenticity is the
vehicle through which darker skinned people take back their power
(20:15):
from lighter skinned people. She talks to one woman in
particular who's darker skinned and expressed jealousy over a lighter
skinned friend or Pierre, and said, well, you know, I
basically I act petty. I don't include her, I ignore her. Um,
I just make it clear that I don't want anything
(20:36):
to do with her. And in all of her current
and past research on uh colorism and women of different
skin tones and shades, she had found in a previous
study that nearly all of the dark skinned black women
she talked to expressed having wanted to be lighter at
some point in their lives, but none of the lighter
(20:58):
skinned women expressed a desire to be worker, which directly
reflects the degree of privilege even if you are considered
less authentic that comes along with being lighter skinned. Well,
and that taking back of the power, UM certainly isn't
exclusive to say African American women. UM. That was something
(21:19):
that over in that BuzzFeed conversation. UM Norberto Briseno, who
is of Mexican, American and Chicano ethnicity, talked about UM.
Brissenio said, I'll be the first to admit that I
had a very ignorant view of white people growing up.
White people were white. They can't be Latino, they don't
know what I've been through, and they don't look like me.
(21:41):
So we're different. But now, Caroline, why don't we add
another layer to all of this. Let's toss in gender
and see what happens in this colorism conversation. Spoiler alert,
it gets more complicated, and we'll talk about that when
we come right back from a quick break. Caroline, Let's
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Enter stuff and now back to the show. So, as
Maxine leads Craig writes about in another essay in the
(23:08):
book Shades of Difference, gender certainly does add another element
to the colorism question because historically, she says, while white
systems of representation have disparaged black women and portrayed them negatively,
you've got this weird middle ground then of portraying lighter
skinned black women as exotic, and this marks them as
(23:34):
beautiful and desirable, but yet still not the same as
white women well, and also more sexually available than white
women too because of the historic hypersexualization of women of
color in the United States. And we go into the
issue of exoticism, particularly as it pertains to black women
(23:56):
in another podcast episode from a while back um called
Exotic Beauty, if you want to go back and listen
to that. But one thing that Craig talks about in
recounting this history of black beauty pageants in the United
States is how before black became synonymous with people of
African descent, it was mostly used to describe darker complexions,
(24:21):
and before the nineteen sixties in the Civil Rights movement,
most black beauty contests exclusively crowned lighter skin contestants. Again,
there's that internalization process that absolutely happens, although Craig does
note one exception. Yeah, from nineteen sixty one to nineteen
sixty eight, we had the Miss Bronze Beauty Competition, which,
(24:45):
unlike most of the black beauty contest at the time,
that sought these unattainable beauty standards. Uh, Miss Bronze actually
crowned darker skinned women and really women of various skin
tents in general. So Miss Bronze producer Belva Davis told Craig, quote,
we use the pageant to make political statements about segregation,
(25:07):
being left out and about complexion and all of that.
So this was a really big deal for you know,
the darker skinned beauty to be recognized within that community
is something to be proud of rather than something to
distance yourself from. Um. But speaking of that, you know,
(25:28):
on the one one side of the spectrum, on the
lighter skin side of the spectrum, we have this exoticism
going on. But then on the other side, we have
the de sexualization of darker skinned women. UM. And this
is something that Margaret L. Hunter explores in a two
thousand two paper called if You're Light, You're all Right?
Light skin color a social capital for women of color,
(25:51):
and in it she explores how lighter skin equals more beautiful,
equals more social capital. The flips of that is, for
darker skinned women, you have a triple jeopardy as it's
termed of gender, race, and skin color. On top of that, Yeah,
and if you're an NPR listener, you're probably familiar with
(26:13):
Michelle Norris is the Race Card Project, which is a fascinating,
very brief look at people's experiences with race. And I
say very brief because it's literally, what is it six words? Yeah,
you have to describe race and what race means to you,
and I think it's like five or six words or less. Yeah,
And so there there were a lot of submissions talking about,
(26:36):
for instance, getting called pretty for a dark skinned girl
and all of the weird exceptionalism that comes along with
people just assuming and internalizing the ideas of darker skin
as being something weird and different and not potentially beautiful. Yeah,
(26:57):
and also being something that that's the first thing that
they are going to see about you, and that's going
to be the basis of how they judge you. Um.
And a throwback to a recent Stuff I Never Told
You episode, the Anita Hill Effect. This also came up
during her testimony. UM. Some detractors of Anita Hill said
(27:19):
that she was just jealous because now Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas preferred lighter skinned women. So as I was
reading about all of this, Carolina was like Anita Hill,
it's all back, and we talked about the economic penalties
(27:40):
that colorism exacts earlier in the podcast when we mentioned,
you know the statistic that darker skinned Latinos earn less
money than lighter skinned Latinos, Well, the same is absolutely
true for darker skinned black women. And keep in mind
that triple jeopardy. So you're going to get a gender
wage gap, you're going to get a further complication because
she is a and of color, and probably another ding
(28:02):
inter paycheck because she's a darker skinned woman of color. Yeah,
and darker skinned black women tend to be perceived in
the workplace as less competent, but they're also less likely
to get married. Researchers found that lighter skinned black women
are more likely to marry somewhat of higher social status,
higher education, and higher income compared to their darker skinned peers.
(28:27):
But there was one note in that two thousand six
u g. A study looking at income and skin tone
that jumped out to me, which was when they when
they look exclusively at women of color, they found that
medium skin toned women are often viewed most favorably compared
(28:49):
to lighter skinned and darker skinned women because they embody
both that authenticity and quotes the fact that we talked about,
but they don't straight too far away from idea of
what a respectable middle class person should look like. It's
like they're embodying. They're embodying both of our not ideals.
(29:11):
Everyone's anxieties. Yeah about race are rigid comfort zones established
via racism. I want my comfort zone to be squishy,
not rigid. I know, well, you know what's not helping
Hollywood also Bollywood? Yeah, that's true. I mean, Exhibit A
would probably be the huge dust up over Zoe Seldonna
(29:33):
being cast as Nina Simone in the biopic that it
just came out right or it's coming out. I think
it's about to come out. Yeah. And I mean if
you've seen, if you know anything about Nina Simone, or
have watched her documentary, or have listened to our podcast
All about Nina Simone, Good Good, Good Call Good Plug.
The High Process of Soul, episode title and issues of
(29:53):
her dark skin tone as well as her facial features
were a huge deal for her. These aren't just uh
feeling and emotions and insecurities that people are projecting onto
Nina Simone. These are actual things that she herself struggled
with and so the fact that a lighter skinned, very slender,
tall uh latina black woman was cast to play her
(30:18):
caused a lot of people, including people in Nina Simon's
family uh, to kind of throw their hands up. Yeah,
I mean. And another example of this came from straight
out of Compton in a casting call that was publicized,
which was looking specifically for female extras, but they broke
(30:40):
it down by hotness categories from A through D, with
A being the hottest of the hot and that category
was open to women of all ethnicities, preferably with straight hair.
But then if you look at C and D, which
were considered the least attractive, the casting call explicitly asked
(31:02):
for darker skinned women. Also side note, the b example
for this casting call was Beyonce, and I was like,
nobody calls baby is beyond A, She's in her own category. Um,
And some people in the industry jump to, I mean,
you can't even like really defend that kind of colorism
(31:24):
in action. I mean, like even for C and D,
they were not only requesting darker skinned women, but also
women with more natural hair textures and also weaves, And
I mean isn't all this code for class. I mean,
that's the thing earlier, like colorism in class are inextricably linked.
And and some people in the industry were like, oh, well,
you know, this is just how casting calls work. But
(31:47):
at the same time, it does exemplify all of these issues.
And y'all, Straight out of Compton has a lot of issues.
Is very entertaining, but it's got a lot of issues. Um.
Another example from which is I don't I don't know
(32:07):
how it was published. Um. This was Alexander Stanley's Beyond
Tone Death New York Times profile of Shonda Rhimes UM,
which was essentially just like a send up of the
angry black woman stereotype. A. I don't think I read this.
Oh god, don't it's horrible. I mean, like, I honestly,
(32:28):
I don't know how it passed through that many editorial
like checks to end up published in it, though it
managed to both acknowledge and uphold colorism. In one sentence
describing Viola Davis so Um, Stanley writes, ignoring the narrow
beauty standards some African American women are held to. There,
(32:51):
we have acknowledgement of colorism. MS rhymes chose a performer.
She's talking about Viola Davis, by the way, who is older,
darker scanned, and it's classically beautiful and Carrie Washington or
for that matter, Halle Berry. And it was like what okay,
and I forget what speech it was, but Viola Davis
(33:14):
clapped back to it, saying, you know, like, okay, if
this is what let's classically beautiful looks like nikes, that
is so awkward. Well I mean it's racist. Yeah, well yeah,
that's probably why it's awkward. But I just it's it's
making my skin crawl because you're exactly right. I don't
(33:34):
know how someone didn't read that, but I mean this is,
I guess, a little advertisement for the importance of diversity
in your on your team, whether it's your newsroom or
your app developer program. I sound like such an old
app developer program, those apps and the kids these days.
I'll love to get some hot wings for my apps. Um,
(33:55):
but if we hop over to Bollywood, whereas American film
stars have taken, say like vocal stances against photo shopping.
Speaking of Carrie Washington, she recently came out and very
tactfully called out her cover image on ad week where
(34:15):
she does look kind of unrecognizable. Yeah, I don't know, Like, yes,
her skin is definitely lighter on the magazine cover than
it is in real life, but I don't know what
they did to her face. Her face is completely restructured,
and she was just like, it's it's uncomfortable to see that,
like something that looks so different from what I see
in the mirror. UM. And you mentioned the skin lightning,
(34:39):
and this is also something that's happened in UH cosmetics
campaigns here with you know, Beyonce's skin being lightened, other
actors and celebrities of color having their skin lightened. But
this is also a huge force in Bollywood, to the
point that some stars like Nandita Dos are publicly calling
out digitals skin lightning. UM And apparently it's super common
(35:03):
as well for people like professional cricket players and Bollywood
stars to shill for skin lightners. And Miss Emma Watson
recently got herself in some hot water because of long
ago campaign. Now that she did that was I think
it ran in India, UM for it might have been Loreale. No,
(35:24):
it was an Essay Lauter skin lightning product. Yeah, I mean,
we're all being duped by cosmetics companies, right, because you
know I'll be in Sephora, for instance, and you know
I have I break out sometimes, as you all have
heard me talk about, I break out sometimes, and like
sometimes that leaves me with acne scars or a little
(35:47):
bit of uneven skin texture. And so I might go
into Sophora looking for a skin evening cream. But all
of that crap is sold under different names to different cultures.
So like what might be promised to me, as like
a middle class white lady in America, as just like
this will even your skin tone, It'll make you radiant, carrocant, brilliant,
(36:11):
they all promise. In America, they tend to promise like
radiance and youth because that's what this market demands. But
somewhere like India, for instance, it might promise lightning properties.
It's all the same gunk in a jar, right, Yeah,
just with like very specific strategic wording on it. Right,
what might be advertised as radiance, brilliance or shine, and
(36:35):
one Sephora might be just a straight up lightner and
say another Sephora. Um, but quickly too, if we look
at images on screen, um, the colorism and the the
use of lighter skinned actors is something that is definitely
(36:57):
been called out in Spanish language television and telenovelas in particular, Um,
the lead characters tend to be very light skinned. Um
they also tend to often be blonde, whereas if you
have characters like maids there you'll find darker skin. So again,
class hierarchy built into all of this. The famous people
(37:19):
have been calling out this color hierarchy for years now.
Back in two thousand four, Christina Milian called out the
narrow Latina beauty standard that was limited to basically light
skin j Los and Salma Hiaks in a Latina magazine
cover story. And then you have actress Kiki Palmer say
on an l A panel quote, when I was five
(37:42):
years old, I used to pray to have light skin
because I would always hear how pretty that little light
skinned girl was. And there was a similar theme that
arose in essence speech by Lupetea Yango and which she said,
I got teased and taunted about my night shade its skin.
In my one prayer to God, the miracle Worker was
(38:03):
that I would wake up lighter skinned. And then alec
Weck came on the international scene a celebrated model. She
was Darkest Night, she was on all other runways and
in every magazine, and everyone was talking about how beautiful
she was. And I love this part where she says
even Oprah called her beautiful and that made it a fact.
So while it's good that we're having these kinds of
(38:24):
conversations and you do have celebrities of color who are
using their platforms to call attention to it, we're still
up against this massive cosmetics industry that is happy to
profit off of colorism. Yeah. Back in nineteen seventy three,
Unilever launched Fair and Lovely in India and despite Nandita
(38:48):
Dosa's efforts in UH, Indians spent more money on skin
lightners than on coke. Uh. And they even launched a
product for men that is called Fair and Handsome. Yeah.
So I mean it's uh what we've seen, especially with Dove,
where we have all of the Doves, the Dove women products,
(39:11):
but now we have Dove for men. And I know
that because my fiancee uses Dove for men and it
always makes me chuckle because I'm like, ha, you're getting
sold the same stuff I am, and it does smell delicious. Um.
But people might be surprised to learn that, according to
the World Health Organization, the highest per capita skin bleaching
happens in Nigeria UM seventy seven percent of women in
(39:33):
Nigeria use skin lighteners regularly, and a story in the
BBC reported how dermatologists in Africa have reported an uptick
in skin bleaching and skin damage related to it because
a lot of times the chemicals and skin lighteners are
not very good. There's one condition that a lot of
(39:54):
women I believe this was in the article talking about
Nigerian women. A lot of women have experienced where the
product will actually cause their skin to turn a purple shade.
Because it's not it's not healthy for you. And a
lot of these products aren't. It's not like a lot
of women are buying, you know, the two hundred dollar
jar of magical cream from the Sephora website. A lot
(40:16):
of women are buying the more black market stuff from
markets in their towns, and I mean there's a lot
of question as to what's actually in them. Well, and
it is true too that if you're your cream cost
two dollars, it has to work, will do anything. Yeah,
speaking of people getting duped um But in the US, though,
(40:38):
there were enough reports of mercury poisoning related to skin
lightner use among certain groups of Mexican American women that
now the FDA, CDC, and the e p A have
all issued warnings against using those products. So we've established
all of these these unhealthy patterns, you know, unhealthy in
(40:59):
many different kinds of way days. Um. But one thing,
especially as two white ladies with lots of privileges, UM
should also acknowledge and emphasize is that colorism should not
be confused with, or conflated with, or communicated as just
the benevolent marginalization of darker skinned women, basically saying, you
(41:22):
have it so bad, poor thing, you must hate yourself.
I'm sure you do. Yeah. This is something that Erico
Williams Simon wrote about in Ebany Magazine, where she was saying,
you would be entirely incorrect to assume that every dark
skinned woman of whatever race that you see had to
struggle through the experience that Lepide and Ago described of
(41:46):
almost as a rite of passage, to get to thinking
that you're awesome. She pointed out, by the way, guys,
I have always thought I was fly. I've always enjoyed
my skin and my looks and my inner self, and
I didn't ever have to go through that period of
self loathing that so many people assume happens when you
have darker skin, probably as a product of our own
(42:08):
bias against darker skin. UM. But she also notes how listen,
the solution to colorism isn't just considering these women sexually desirable.
Sexiness is not the ultimate goal here and just saying
you know what, you're pretty, especially as she was kind
of talking to UH two guys saying like it's the
(42:30):
whole pretty for a dark skinned girl thing, where it's
like that is really not helping anything at all. And
she emphasizes we've talked about too, how colorism is a
cross cultural issue and not limited to the African American community.
It's around the world, And I guess the upside beyond
just re emphasizing that not everyone feels this way, UH,
(42:55):
is to talk about things like the Darkest Beautiful campaign.
It was launched in India couple of years ago to
combat the fair and lovely fueled colorism UH and nondiadas.
So we've mentioned now a couple of times the Bollywood
actress does publicly support it, and she's calling on other actors,
actresses and performers to join with her and stop shilling
(43:15):
for these lightning cream companies. And another riff on fair
and Lovely that Fatima LOADI launched in Pakistan as a
campaign she calls Darkest Divine and it's actually Pakistan's first
anti coolorism campaign that she kicked off. And then most
recently in Washington University at St. Louis held what organizers
(43:39):
think is the very first international colorism conference in the US.
It's finally starting to get um more scholarship. I mean,
there's there's a decent amount of academic literature out there
about it, but clearly it's such a big issue that
it needs more attention. I mean also considering all of
those socio economic repercussions. Yeah, but the ebony writer Erica
(44:01):
Williams Simmons does have a really good recommendation for the meantime.
So she says constantly and quietly, check yourself. Ask why
in your mind, a white woman with tattoos is edgy,
a light woman with pink hair is creative, but a
darker woman with either is ghetto. Evaluate why you lighten
yourselfies notice when you obsessively oo and ah only over
(44:25):
lighter skinned children, or don't look a darker skinned man
in the eye when speaking to him, Stop ascribing certain
behaviors to certain complexions, and one in the position to
create opportunities for others, consider if your commitment to diversity
is at all visible to the naked eye. Bam, I know,
I mean that's the perfect note to Now ask our
(44:46):
listeners whether they've experienced this, what they think about it. Um.
I'm also hoping to hear from people outside of the
United States too, because a lot of the info that
we have access to and have talked about is u
S specific books. So send us your thoughts as always.
Mom Stuff how stuff Works dot Com is your email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
(45:07):
messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. So I have a
letter here from Kate in response to our Anita Hill
Effect episode. I remember I was in seventh grade when
the hearing occurred, and remember the snickering and disbelief of
Hill that took place in our class when we covered
(45:29):
it in Current events in Social Studies class. Despite the
efforts of our female teacher and my mother to represent
and to shed light on Hill's perspective. I've thought back
to this trial on various occasions when I've seen women discredited.
It's disheartening how awareness does not always breed true progress.
I look forward to the film of this incident to
be reminded how far we have and haven't come. One
(45:49):
funny anecdote somewhat related. In the summer of two thousand,
I was working as an intern in Washington, d C.
And living on Capitol Hill. I was a pretty innocent
college student. Despite my ultra fair compliant action, I was
determined to acquire something of a tan and devoted myself
to some regular sunbathing, which I did on the nicest
patch of grass within walking distance from my apartment, one
of the Supreme Court lawns. It was, without a doubt,
(46:11):
the most popular sunbathing destination on the Hill, and usually
liberally sprinkled with girls in swimsuits. After I had been
doing this routine for many weekends in a row, I
was approached by a police officer who patrolled the area.
He was non creepy, but his talking to me in
a swimsuit made me very aware of my non dressed nous.
He warned me about walking home from the metro stop
alone at night, as there had been some assaults recently
(46:32):
on the area on women walking alone. Then he asked
me if I liked the lawn. He then told me
it was the nicest lawn on the hill because it
was the pet project of Judge Clarence Thomas, who said
he was a quote great corticulturalist. Then he pointed out
Judge Thomas's window in the building directly above us. See,
(46:54):
that's his window right up there. He likes to have
the nicest view. I actually don't think the cop was
thinking when I was thinking at all. Yeah, sure, horticulturalist,
which I found pretty hilarious even at anyway, it's a
random memory. Well let's just say that even at one
I chose not to return to the lawn. I wonder
if anyone else who listens has funny stories like that. Well, thanks, Kate,
(47:18):
and I've got a letter here from Jill about our
ghosting episode for a while back, subject line ghosting since
eight She writes, Hello, ladies, hot on the heels of
your ghosting podcast. I recently started reading Mrs Beaton's Household Management,
a compilation of etiquette articles published as a single volume
in eighteen sixty one in England. Imagine my surprise when
(47:41):
I read this gem. When any of the carriages of
the party guests are announced, or the time for their
departure arrived, they should make a slight intimation to the hostess,
without however, exciting any observation that they're about to depart.
If this cannot be done, however, without creating too much bustle,
it will be better for the visitors to retire quietly
(48:02):
without taking their leave. Ghosting in relationships maybe new, but
people have been advised to duck out on parties for
nearly two centuries. Thank you so much for sending us that, Jim,
Jill and listeners. Now we want to hear from you mom.
Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email
address and for links all of our social media as
(48:24):
well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts with
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on over to stuff Mom Never told You dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you From how stupp
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, And today we're talking about colorism,
which might sound like a phenonym for racism, but indeed, no,
(00:24):
I think I think it's an aspect of racism. For sure,
it's under the racism umbrella, so to speak. Um, but
colorism has more to do uh. And I'm not even
speaking euphemistically when I say it has more to do
with shades honestly, Uh, skin tones, if one person is
(00:44):
darker than another in the same culture. Yeah, And listeners
might be wondering, like, why are two pasty skin Sorry, Caroline,
I hope you don't take that notes in the wrong way.
It's the hard truth we call we call pasty skin
pasty skin stuff I ever told you. Um So, why
why would we be talking about this issue? Well, first
(01:07):
of all, because fascy skinned white folks like ourselves absolutely
perpetuate this kind of violence. And I think it's also
helpful for understanding all the very layers of racism and
its complications, and also how privilege works, the ways that
(01:27):
we all moved through the world, often in different ways
depending on all of our different attributes, including the very
shade of our skin. Yeah. So, whereas racism is discrimination
often systemic, institutionalized discrimination against people based on their ethnicity,
colorism is more the unconscious and institutionalized prejudice against people
(01:52):
based on the color of their skin. And like I
was saying, it exists even within ethnic groups, and it's
really tied into the internalization of a lot of those
racist factors in culture. Yeah. So it exists around the world, um,
but particularly in sight of past European colonization, So you
(02:12):
have that internalization of a white supremacist hierarchy, but it
also in exists in places where colonization did not exist,
So you have places like the Far East where whiteness
also was valued. But um, I think it's uh, it's
it's foolish to assume that anywhere you go in the world,
(02:36):
a desire for lighter skin is a desire for the
whiteness that you and I embodied, Caroline, right, because I mean,
we talked about this in our last episode on tanning,
that people in certain Asian countries don't necessarily want to
have lighter skin because they want to be white or
because their country once had white people in it or
(02:58):
over it, but more or because of that issue that
we talked about of the class division of people in
lower working classes, uh, participating in manual labor outside there
in the sun, so their skin is naturally darker versus
people of higher classes who did not have to work outside. Yeah.
So if you go to Southeast Asia, for instance, a
(03:20):
wider complexion was seen as more noble and aristocratic. But
I almost wonder caroline as a side note here, if
wider and lighter should not be used as synonymously as
they often are, because I feel like once we start
saying wider, it does put in our heads like the
idea of like, oh, they want to look like you
and me, But it's more the lightness factor. For instance,
(03:44):
if we talk about people in India, there is an
issue with skin bleaching that goes on there, also in
many other places around the world. But there was an
article about skin bleaching in India which emphasized how the
desire isn't to look European but rather for a hue
(04:06):
that is listed on matchmaking websites over there as wheedish,
as in like wheat the grain whedish, And I just
mentioned that to help contextualize a little bit the different
forms that colorism can take. And I think it's interesting
to note too that you know, colorism isn't really discussed
(04:28):
as loudly and as broadly on the national or global
internet stage, if you will, um as racism is because
a lot of people perceive this to be an in
group issue, sort of almost like dirty laundry. We don't
want to talk about how you know, here we are
battling racism toward our group, and yet we're squabbling or
(04:51):
just feeling less than because of the shade of our
skin color. And this was something too that came up
in a busfeed conversation a little while back with a
round table of its Latino writers, and one of them,
Javier Moreno, said, I've always felt the colorism and race
is the biggest elephant in the room and the Latino
community both are extremely prevalent, yet nobody ever talks about it.
(05:16):
And I think to you clearly that this is one
of those issues that people also quickly dismiss as political correctness.
In quotes, it's like, oh, here we go, here's another
thing we gotta worry about. It's like, yeah, no, let's
pay attention to these things and be decent humans. For instance,
when we started reading about colorism, the first thing that
(05:41):
came to my mind was from February when the quote
unquote hot convict Jeremy Meeks's mug shot went viral. It
was this lighter skinned African American man with blue eyes
and yes, he's very attractive, he does look like a model,
and women went berzerko online over him. At one point
(06:04):
Glamour magazine nicknamed him Felon Bay And this, this right here,
it's colorism because as we will talk about more, and
studies and statistics clearly show skin color absolutely impacts how
you were treated in the legal system and also how
(06:24):
you were simply perceived when you're walking down the street,
like whether you were perceived as more trustworthy, more bayworthy.
I mean, like you said, this isn't an issue of
political correctness. We're not just bleeding heart liberals who were
looking for something to be offended about, which is what
I feel like we get accused of sometimes, um because
(06:46):
for instance, look at Viola Davis. Uh, there's a quote
from her that we found where she said the paper
bag test is still very much alive and kicking. Yeah,
so we're not just making the stuff up people. UM.
I think one of the most famous and infamous at
the same time academic examples demonstrating how colorism works is
(07:12):
uh the seven Doll experiment, and it was specifically designed
to demonstrate the impact of segregation on African American kids.
And if I'm remembering it correctly, the study setup was
essentially bringing young African American kids into a room and
presenting them with dolls, um, a white doll and then
(07:36):
a black doll, which the researchers had to make because
a black doll did not exist on the mainstream market
at the time, and they asked the kids about their
impressions of the dolls, the characteristics they would associate with it,
which one they would rather play with, and overwhelmingly the
black children preferred the white doll and also attributed more
(07:57):
positive traits to it. If we've asked forward then to
The study was replicated with both white and children of
color and found similar results of white bias, although the
bias among the black children had diminished somewhat but was
(08:18):
still present. Um, but the white kids absolutely exhibited it
across the board, and Kristin I believe it was also
in that study that either in addition to dolls or
in place of actual physical baby dolls, they showed the
kids um a spectrum of five paper dolls, five children
(08:39):
little cartoons ranging from very pale to very dark with
shades in between, and they were asking children questions like
who's the smartest, who's the best behaved, who's the kindest,
who's the most fun things like that. And they did
find that white children were quicker to us I'm those
(09:00):
more positive characteristics to the white or the lighter shades UM,
and the black children were more open to yes, ascribing
positive traits to the black dolls, but also being open
to not everybody is positive or negative based on their color. Well,
in speaking of kids, there was a piece in The
(09:22):
New York Times not too long ago which reported on
a study from Villanova University which found that darker skinned
black girls in the classroom were three times likelier to
be suspended than their lighter skinned female classmates. Yeah, it
was a horrifying article, uh, incredibly eye opening um to
(09:43):
read about first of all, young kids being caught up
in the legal system for basically disciplinary issues rather than
just maybe going to the principle. But the fact that
it was so clearly and statistically divided along um color lines.
And I'm not just talking race and white versus black
(10:04):
or whatever, but I mean even to the point of
between black children the girls who had darker skin going
to the office more often. And it follows as we
grow up. So there was a study from two thousand
six out of the University of Georgia which found lighter
skinned African Americans were perceived as more employable than darker
skinned African Americans, even if they had more education and
(10:29):
more work experience. Yeah, and that translates, as you might imagine,
to the legal system. And this is uh from an
interview with shankra Vedantam, our favorite NPR correspondent, host of
a Hidden Brain podcast. Shanker. We love him. He doesn't
know who we are, but we're but we Yeah. Kristen
and I discovered before this podcast that we both get
(10:50):
so excited when shankers on NPR. So if anyone knows
shankra Vedantam, please drop him a line on our behalf. Yeah,
we say hi. Now back to the podcast. But Shawn
I was telling the New York Times that darker skinned
African American defendants and now these are grown ups are
twice as likely to receive the death penalty as lighter
skin defendants for equivalent crimes. And if that doesn't speak
(11:14):
to just inherent biases that people carry around, I don't
know what does. Well. And in the example that Vedantem
was giving to the New York Times, there was much
less evidence that was used to convict the darker skin
defendant as well. So it says, if the color of
our skin also raises or lowers the burden of proof. Yeah,
(11:37):
and if we look at the flip side of this,
you know, let's get let's talk about something fun like money, right,
that's so great? Well, Shanka would say, slowly roll, because
other researchers found that lighter skinned Latinos, for instance, earned
five thousand dollars more annually than darker skinned Latinos in
the US. And we can also see this too in
(11:59):
Paula ticks. Yeah. So, political science research has found that
while racism did cost Obama some votes in two thousand eight,
uh colorism cast him as a lighter skinned African American
man more favorably than had he been darker skinned, And
there were some attack ads that the study highlighted that intentionally,
(12:24):
Um either juxtaposed him next to um, another African American
with darker skin, or shaded his skin even darker to
evoke those kinds of negative reactions. Well, don't you remember
that that's the same thing that happened with the O. J.
Simpson magazine cover during the trial that they was at
(12:47):
Time or news Week purposely purposely darkened his skin, and
it was a huge deal. I remember that. I remember
being in fifth or sixth grade and hearing like all
of the rigamarole that aim because of that, because they
had intentionally made him look what a little more dangerous,
a little blacker like a little more scary to white
(13:09):
mainstream America. Well, and I wonder too about how this
plays in with perceptions and the awful, awful racist things
that people have said about Michelle Obama. As you know,
her skin is darker than Barocks. And I don't know,
I just wonder if she were a lighter skin floatists
which she received the same kind of angry black woman
(13:34):
racist stereotyping that she has, because according to colorism research,
the answer would be no. I mean, of course it
would still be there, but maybe not as intense. So
the question then is why does this exists? I mean,
it's something that's cross cultural, it's intra ethnic um and
(13:56):
it's a dynamic that isn't just easily explained as, oh, well,
everyone wants to be us white people. So clearly this bias,
to put it lightly, exists. But the question is why,
And the answer is something that we do not have
ten hours to go into in granular detail, because it
(14:16):
is something that's cross cultural, that's intra ethnic, that doesn't
have a simple answer, and also something that has been
historically perpetuated for centuries and two it's something that's only
recently receiving dedicated scholarship, and that was one reason um why.
(14:38):
Vetta Sanders Thompson contributed an essay to one of those
newer books about colorism called Shades of Difference. Yeah. She
wrote that every marginalized ethnic group has issues with physical identification,
which includes the color of their skin, physical features such
as color and texture of hair, contours of the face
and nose, body shape, all of these things things relate
(15:00):
to colorism. Skin color, she writes, is almost never considered
without some attention to these other physical features. So if
we look at colorism specifically in the United States of
course we have to talk about slavery. I mean, it's
obvious slave owners would divide enslaved people by skin tone,
with lighter skinned people likelier to work in the houses
(15:25):
and darker skinned slaves sent out to the fields. Um.
And it was also that division was also intentional to
try to turn groups of slaves against each other by
essentially establishing that hierarchy according to skin tone. Yeah. And
of course you have the issue of white slave owners
(15:49):
raping enslaved women. And the products of these unions were
children with lighter skin, and by virtue of their lighter
skin or by virtue of beinging essentially children of the
slave owner. Uh, they might receive more favorable treatment, maybe
even learning to read and write, and potentially eventually for
(16:10):
some of them being freed. Um and during reconstruction, historians
right that we immediately see lighter skinned African Americans immediately
benefiting from their skin tone, and that some of the
first black communities associations, schools, churches were exclusively made up
of lighter skinned African Americans. And it's this system of
(16:33):
colorism that lead to measures like the paper bag test,
which is what Viola Davis was referencing. Earlier. Yeah, so
the paper bag test was essentially if you take you know,
like a grocery bag and hold against your skin, you
had to be lighter than the bag in order to
gain you know, entrance or admission or membership into whatever
(16:54):
it was you were trying to get into. And this
also gets into a whole other conversation too that we're
not going to address in this podcast of passing. It's like,
if you could pass that test, you could literally possibly
pass as white. UM. There were also ruler tests and
comb tests that have been documented UM that sometimes took
(17:17):
place at those exclusively lighter skinned UM organizations or even
at churches where if a comb says hanging at the door,
that means that you have to be able to cleanly
run the comb through your hair, thus suggesting that it
is straight enough for you to gain entrants. And all
of this really exemplifies to how colorism and class are
(17:41):
inextricably linked. And of course this brings in issues too
of European colonization. UM. You have a similar color cast
system developing, for instance, UH with Spanish colonists in Latin
America privileging lighter skinned people with more European looking acial features,
and even today you still see those skin and class
(18:03):
link divisions existing among Mexicans and Mexican Americans. And we
see a similar effect that academics referred to as internal
colonialism at different sites of European colonization around the world.
So this is not something exclusive to the Western hemisphere
by any means um In fact, another point made in
(18:27):
an essay in Shades of Difference Wise skin color Matters
is how skin lightning in the Philippines, for instance, is
rooted in multiple layers of colonialism. So you have, yes,
Spanish and American colonialism, but also the rise of Chinese
and Spanish Mastizo middle classes. And then you just by
(18:49):
virtue of geography, you have that proximity too countries like China, Japan,
and Korea and all of the media coming from there
where all so that lighter skin is prized. So I mean,
that's why I say, like, we don't have ten hours
to completely unravel this topic, because it is so multifaceted. Yeah,
(19:12):
so let's take a look at some other examples of
how colorism acts as a discriminatory force within ethnic groups.
I mean, we've already talked about the socioeconomic stratification in
the African American community, I mean post slavery. You could
link the distribution of wealth among African Americans directly two
(19:32):
divisions and skin color. But then there's also this issue
of authenticity that research on colorism has unearthed as well,
because while lighter skin certainly affords social and economic privilege,
it's simultaneously marginalizes one's ethnic quote unquote authenticity. So if
(19:54):
we look, for instance, at the Black Power movement within
that group, lighter skin was se as less authentically black.
And Margaret Hunter, writing in an essay from Mills College,
says that for some people of color, authenticity is the
vehicle through which darker skinned people take back their power
(20:15):
from lighter skinned people. She talks to one woman in
particular who's darker skinned and expressed jealousy over a lighter
skinned friend or Pierre, and said, well, you know, I
basically I act petty. I don't include her, I ignore her. Um,
I just make it clear that I don't want anything
(20:36):
to do with her. And in all of her current
and past research on uh colorism and women of different
skin tones and shades, she had found in a previous
study that nearly all of the dark skinned black women
she talked to expressed having wanted to be lighter at
some point in their lives, but none of the lighter
(20:58):
skinned women expressed a desire to be worker, which directly
reflects the degree of privilege even if you are considered
less authentic that comes along with being lighter skinned. Well,
and that taking back of the power, UM certainly isn't
exclusive to say African American women. UM. That was something
(21:19):
that over in that BuzzFeed conversation. UM Norberto Briseno, who
is of Mexican, American and Chicano ethnicity, talked about UM.
Brissenio said, I'll be the first to admit that I
had a very ignorant view of white people growing up.
White people were white. They can't be Latino, they don't
know what I've been through, and they don't look like me.
(21:41):
So we're different. But now, Caroline, why don't we add
another layer to all of this. Let's toss in gender
and see what happens in this colorism conversation. Spoiler alert,
it gets more complicated, and we'll talk about that when
we come right back from a quick break. Caroline, Let's
(22:03):
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Enter stuff and now back to the show. So, as
Maxine leads Craig writes about in another essay in the
(23:08):
book Shades of Difference, gender certainly does add another element
to the colorism question because historically, she says, while white
systems of representation have disparaged black women and portrayed them negatively,
you've got this weird middle ground then of portraying lighter
skinned black women as exotic, and this marks them as
(23:34):
beautiful and desirable, but yet still not the same as
white women well, and also more sexually available than white
women too because of the historic hypersexualization of women of
color in the United States. And we go into the
issue of exoticism, particularly as it pertains to black women
(23:56):
in another podcast episode from a while back um called
Exotic Beauty, if you want to go back and listen
to that. But one thing that Craig talks about in
recounting this history of black beauty pageants in the United
States is how before black became synonymous with people of
African descent, it was mostly used to describe darker complexions,
(24:21):
and before the nineteen sixties in the Civil Rights movement,
most black beauty contests exclusively crowned lighter skin contestants. Again,
there's that internalization process that absolutely happens, although Craig does
note one exception. Yeah, from nineteen sixty one to nineteen
sixty eight, we had the Miss Bronze Beauty Competition, which,
(24:45):
unlike most of the black beauty contest at the time,
that sought these unattainable beauty standards. Uh, Miss Bronze actually
crowned darker skinned women and really women of various skin
tents in general. So Miss Bronze producer Belva Davis told Craig, quote,
we use the pageant to make political statements about segregation,
(25:07):
being left out and about complexion and all of that.
So this was a really big deal for you know,
the darker skinned beauty to be recognized within that community
is something to be proud of rather than something to
distance yourself from. Um. But speaking of that, you know,
(25:28):
on the one one side of the spectrum, on the
lighter skin side of the spectrum, we have this exoticism
going on. But then on the other side, we have
the de sexualization of darker skinned women. UM. And this
is something that Margaret L. Hunter explores in a two
thousand two paper called if You're Light, You're all Right?
Light skin color a social capital for women of color,
(25:51):
and in it she explores how lighter skin equals more beautiful,
equals more social capital. The flips of that is, for
darker skinned women, you have a triple jeopardy as it's
termed of gender, race, and skin color. On top of that, Yeah,
and if you're an NPR listener, you're probably familiar with
(26:13):
Michelle Norris is the Race Card Project, which is a fascinating,
very brief look at people's experiences with race. And I
say very brief because it's literally, what is it six words? Yeah,
you have to describe race and what race means to you,
and I think it's like five or six words or less. Yeah,
And so there there were a lot of submissions talking about,
(26:36):
for instance, getting called pretty for a dark skinned girl
and all of the weird exceptionalism that comes along with
people just assuming and internalizing the ideas of darker skin
as being something weird and different and not potentially beautiful. Yeah,
(26:57):
and also being something that that's the first thing that
they are going to see about you, and that's going
to be the basis of how they judge you. Um.
And a throwback to a recent Stuff I Never Told
You episode, the Anita Hill Effect. This also came up
during her testimony. UM. Some detractors of Anita Hill said
(27:19):
that she was just jealous because now Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas preferred lighter skinned women. So as I was
reading about all of this, Carolina was like Anita Hill,
it's all back, and we talked about the economic penalties
(27:40):
that colorism exacts earlier in the podcast when we mentioned,
you know the statistic that darker skinned Latinos earn less
money than lighter skinned Latinos, Well, the same is absolutely
true for darker skinned black women. And keep in mind
that triple jeopardy. So you're going to get a gender
wage gap, you're going to get a further complication because
she is a and of color, and probably another ding
(28:02):
inter paycheck because she's a darker skinned woman of color. Yeah,
and darker skinned black women tend to be perceived in
the workplace as less competent, but they're also less likely
to get married. Researchers found that lighter skinned black women
are more likely to marry somewhat of higher social status,
higher education, and higher income compared to their darker skinned peers.
(28:27):
But there was one note in that two thousand six
u g. A study looking at income and skin tone
that jumped out to me, which was when they when
they look exclusively at women of color, they found that
medium skin toned women are often viewed most favorably compared
(28:49):
to lighter skinned and darker skinned women because they embody
both that authenticity and quotes the fact that we talked about,
but they don't straight too far away from idea of
what a respectable middle class person should look like. It's
like they're embodying. They're embodying both of our not ideals.
(29:11):
Everyone's anxieties. Yeah about race are rigid comfort zones established
via racism. I want my comfort zone to be squishy,
not rigid. I know, well, you know what's not helping
Hollywood also Bollywood? Yeah, that's true. I mean, Exhibit A
would probably be the huge dust up over Zoe Seldonna
(29:33):
being cast as Nina Simone in the biopic that it
just came out right or it's coming out. I think
it's about to come out. Yeah. And I mean if
you've seen, if you know anything about Nina Simone, or
have watched her documentary, or have listened to our podcast
All about Nina Simone, Good Good, Good Call Good Plug.
The High Process of Soul, episode title and issues of
(29:53):
her dark skin tone as well as her facial features
were a huge deal for her. These aren't just uh
feeling and emotions and insecurities that people are projecting onto
Nina Simone. These are actual things that she herself struggled
with and so the fact that a lighter skinned, very slender,
tall uh latina black woman was cast to play her
(30:18):
caused a lot of people, including people in Nina Simon's
family uh, to kind of throw their hands up. Yeah,
I mean. And another example of this came from straight
out of Compton in a casting call that was publicized,
which was looking specifically for female extras, but they broke
(30:40):
it down by hotness categories from A through D, with
A being the hottest of the hot and that category
was open to women of all ethnicities, preferably with straight hair.
But then if you look at C and D, which
were considered the least attractive, the casting call explicitly asked
(31:02):
for darker skinned women. Also side note, the b example
for this casting call was Beyonce, and I was like,
nobody calls baby is beyond A, She's in her own category. Um,
And some people in the industry jump to, I mean,
you can't even like really defend that kind of colorism
(31:24):
in action. I mean, like even for C and D,
they were not only requesting darker skinned women, but also
women with more natural hair textures and also weaves, And
I mean isn't all this code for class. I mean,
that's the thing earlier, like colorism in class are inextricably linked.
And and some people in the industry were like, oh, well,
you know, this is just how casting calls work. But
(31:47):
at the same time, it does exemplify all of these issues.
And y'all, Straight out of Compton has a lot of issues.
Is very entertaining, but it's got a lot of issues. Um.
Another example from which is I don't I don't know
(32:07):
how it was published. Um. This was Alexander Stanley's Beyond
Tone Death New York Times profile of Shonda Rhimes UM,
which was essentially just like a send up of the
angry black woman stereotype. A. I don't think I read this.
Oh god, don't it's horrible. I mean, like, I honestly,
(32:28):
I don't know how it passed through that many editorial
like checks to end up published in it, though it
managed to both acknowledge and uphold colorism. In one sentence
describing Viola Davis so Um, Stanley writes, ignoring the narrow
beauty standards some African American women are held to. There,
(32:51):
we have acknowledgement of colorism. MS rhymes chose a performer.
She's talking about Viola Davis, by the way, who is older,
darker scanned, and it's classically beautiful and Carrie Washington or
for that matter, Halle Berry. And it was like what okay,
and I forget what speech it was, but Viola Davis
(33:14):
clapped back to it, saying, you know, like, okay, if
this is what let's classically beautiful looks like nikes, that
is so awkward. Well I mean it's racist. Yeah, well yeah,
that's probably why it's awkward. But I just it's it's
making my skin crawl because you're exactly right. I don't
(33:34):
know how someone didn't read that, but I mean this is,
I guess, a little advertisement for the importance of diversity
in your on your team, whether it's your newsroom or
your app developer program. I sound like such an old
app developer program, those apps and the kids these days.
I'll love to get some hot wings for my apps. Um,
(33:55):
but if we hop over to Bollywood, whereas American film
stars have taken, say like vocal stances against photo shopping.
Speaking of Carrie Washington, she recently came out and very
tactfully called out her cover image on ad week where
(34:15):
she does look kind of unrecognizable. Yeah, I don't know, Like, yes,
her skin is definitely lighter on the magazine cover than
it is in real life, but I don't know what
they did to her face. Her face is completely restructured,
and she was just like, it's it's uncomfortable to see that,
like something that looks so different from what I see
in the mirror. UM. And you mentioned the skin lightning,
(34:39):
and this is also something that's happened in UH cosmetics
campaigns here with you know, Beyonce's skin being lightened, other
actors and celebrities of color having their skin lightened. But
this is also a huge force in Bollywood, to the
point that some stars like Nandita Dos are publicly calling
out digitals skin lightning. UM And apparently it's super common
(35:03):
as well for people like professional cricket players and Bollywood
stars to shill for skin lightners. And Miss Emma Watson
recently got herself in some hot water because of long
ago campaign. Now that she did that was I think
it ran in India, UM for it might have been Loreale. No,
(35:24):
it was an Essay Lauter skin lightning product. Yeah, I mean,
we're all being duped by cosmetics companies, right, because you
know I'll be in Sephora, for instance, and you know
I have I break out sometimes, as you all have
heard me talk about, I break out sometimes, and like
sometimes that leaves me with acne scars or a little
(35:47):
bit of uneven skin texture. And so I might go
into Sophora looking for a skin evening cream. But all
of that crap is sold under different names to different cultures.
So like what might be promised to me, as like
a middle class white lady in America, as just like
this will even your skin tone, It'll make you radiant, carrocant, brilliant,
(36:11):
they all promise. In America, they tend to promise like
radiance and youth because that's what this market demands. But
somewhere like India, for instance, it might promise lightning properties.
It's all the same gunk in a jar, right, Yeah,
just with like very specific strategic wording on it. Right,
what might be advertised as radiance, brilliance or shine, and
(36:35):
one Sephora might be just a straight up lightner and
say another Sephora. Um, but quickly too, if we look
at images on screen, um, the colorism and the the
use of lighter skinned actors is something that is definitely
(36:57):
been called out in Spanish language television and telenovelas in particular, Um,
the lead characters tend to be very light skinned. Um
they also tend to often be blonde, whereas if you
have characters like maids there you'll find darker skin. So again,
class hierarchy built into all of this. The famous people
(37:19):
have been calling out this color hierarchy for years now.
Back in two thousand four, Christina Milian called out the
narrow Latina beauty standard that was limited to basically light
skin j Los and Salma Hiaks in a Latina magazine
cover story. And then you have actress Kiki Palmer say
on an l A panel quote, when I was five
(37:42):
years old, I used to pray to have light skin
because I would always hear how pretty that little light
skinned girl was. And there was a similar theme that
arose in essence speech by Lupetea Yango and which she said,
I got teased and taunted about my night shade its skin.
In my one prayer to God, the miracle Worker was
(38:03):
that I would wake up lighter skinned. And then alec
Weck came on the international scene a celebrated model. She
was Darkest Night, she was on all other runways and
in every magazine, and everyone was talking about how beautiful
she was. And I love this part where she says
even Oprah called her beautiful and that made it a fact.
So while it's good that we're having these kinds of
(38:24):
conversations and you do have celebrities of color who are
using their platforms to call attention to it, we're still
up against this massive cosmetics industry that is happy to
profit off of colorism. Yeah. Back in nineteen seventy three,
Unilever launched Fair and Lovely in India and despite Nandita
(38:48):
Dosa's efforts in UH, Indians spent more money on skin
lightners than on coke. Uh. And they even launched a
product for men that is called Fair and Handsome. Yeah.
So I mean it's uh what we've seen, especially with Dove,
where we have all of the Doves, the Dove women products,
(39:11):
but now we have Dove for men. And I know
that because my fiancee uses Dove for men and it
always makes me chuckle because I'm like, ha, you're getting
sold the same stuff I am, and it does smell delicious. Um.
But people might be surprised to learn that, according to
the World Health Organization, the highest per capita skin bleaching
happens in Nigeria UM seventy seven percent of women in
(39:33):
Nigeria use skin lighteners regularly, and a story in the
BBC reported how dermatologists in Africa have reported an uptick
in skin bleaching and skin damage related to it because
a lot of times the chemicals and skin lighteners are
not very good. There's one condition that a lot of
(39:54):
women I believe this was in the article talking about
Nigerian women. A lot of women have experienced where the
product will actually cause their skin to turn a purple shade.
Because it's not it's not healthy for you. And a
lot of these products aren't. It's not like a lot
of women are buying, you know, the two hundred dollar
jar of magical cream from the Sephora website. A lot
(40:16):
of women are buying the more black market stuff from
markets in their towns, and I mean there's a lot
of question as to what's actually in them. Well, and
it is true too that if you're your cream cost
two dollars, it has to work, will do anything. Yeah,
speaking of people getting duped um But in the US, though,
(40:38):
there were enough reports of mercury poisoning related to skin
lightner use among certain groups of Mexican American women that
now the FDA, CDC, and the e p A have
all issued warnings against using those products. So we've established
all of these these unhealthy patterns, you know, unhealthy in
(40:59):
many different kinds of way days. Um. But one thing,
especially as two white ladies with lots of privileges, UM
should also acknowledge and emphasize is that colorism should not
be confused with, or conflated with, or communicated as just
the benevolent marginalization of darker skinned women, basically saying, you
(41:22):
have it so bad, poor thing, you must hate yourself.
I'm sure you do. Yeah. This is something that Erico
Williams Simon wrote about in Ebany Magazine, where she was saying,
you would be entirely incorrect to assume that every dark
skinned woman of whatever race that you see had to
struggle through the experience that Lepide and Ago described of
(41:46):
almost as a rite of passage, to get to thinking
that you're awesome. She pointed out, by the way, guys,
I have always thought I was fly. I've always enjoyed
my skin and my looks and my inner self, and
I didn't ever have to go through that period of
self loathing that so many people assume happens when you
have darker skin, probably as a product of our own
(42:08):
bias against darker skin. UM. But she also notes how listen,
the solution to colorism isn't just considering these women sexually desirable.
Sexiness is not the ultimate goal here and just saying
you know what, you're pretty, especially as she was kind
of talking to UH two guys saying like it's the
(42:30):
whole pretty for a dark skinned girl thing, where it's
like that is really not helping anything at all. And
she emphasizes we've talked about too, how colorism is a
cross cultural issue and not limited to the African American community.
It's around the world, And I guess the upside beyond
just re emphasizing that not everyone feels this way, UH,
(42:55):
is to talk about things like the Darkest Beautiful campaign.
It was launched in India couple of years ago to
combat the fair and lovely fueled colorism UH and nondiadas.
So we've mentioned now a couple of times the Bollywood
actress does publicly support it, and she's calling on other actors,
actresses and performers to join with her and stop shilling
(43:15):
for these lightning cream companies. And another riff on fair
and Lovely that Fatima LOADI launched in Pakistan as a
campaign she calls Darkest Divine and it's actually Pakistan's first
anti coolorism campaign that she kicked off. And then most
recently in Washington University at St. Louis held what organizers
(43:39):
think is the very first international colorism conference in the US.
It's finally starting to get um more scholarship. I mean,
there's there's a decent amount of academic literature out there
about it, but clearly it's such a big issue that
it needs more attention. I mean also considering all of
those socio economic repercussions. Yeah, but the ebony writer Erica
(44:01):
Williams Simmons does have a really good recommendation for the meantime.
So she says constantly and quietly, check yourself. Ask why
in your mind, a white woman with tattoos is edgy,
a light woman with pink hair is creative, but a
darker woman with either is ghetto. Evaluate why you lighten
yourselfies notice when you obsessively oo and ah only over
(44:25):
lighter skinned children, or don't look a darker skinned man
in the eye when speaking to him, Stop ascribing certain
behaviors to certain complexions, and one in the position to
create opportunities for others, consider if your commitment to diversity
is at all visible to the naked eye. Bam, I know,
I mean that's the perfect note to Now ask our
(44:46):
listeners whether they've experienced this, what they think about it. Um.
I'm also hoping to hear from people outside of the
United States too, because a lot of the info that
we have access to and have talked about is u
S specific books. So send us your thoughts as always.
Mom Stuff how stuff Works dot Com is your email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
(45:07):
messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. So I have a
letter here from Kate in response to our Anita Hill
Effect episode. I remember I was in seventh grade when
the hearing occurred, and remember the snickering and disbelief of
Hill that took place in our class when we covered
(45:29):
it in Current events in Social Studies class. Despite the
efforts of our female teacher and my mother to represent
and to shed light on Hill's perspective. I've thought back
to this trial on various occasions when I've seen women discredited.
It's disheartening how awareness does not always breed true progress.
I look forward to the film of this incident to
be reminded how far we have and haven't come. One
(45:49):
funny anecdote somewhat related. In the summer of two thousand,
I was working as an intern in Washington, d C.
And living on Capitol Hill. I was a pretty innocent
college student. Despite my ultra fair compliant action, I was
determined to acquire something of a tan and devoted myself
to some regular sunbathing, which I did on the nicest
patch of grass within walking distance from my apartment, one
of the Supreme Court lawns. It was, without a doubt,
(46:11):
the most popular sunbathing destination on the Hill, and usually
liberally sprinkled with girls in swimsuits. After I had been
doing this routine for many weekends in a row, I
was approached by a police officer who patrolled the area.
He was non creepy, but his talking to me in
a swimsuit made me very aware of my non dressed nous.
He warned me about walking home from the metro stop
alone at night, as there had been some assaults recently
(46:32):
on the area on women walking alone. Then he asked
me if I liked the lawn. He then told me
it was the nicest lawn on the hill because it
was the pet project of Judge Clarence Thomas, who said
he was a quote great corticulturalist. Then he pointed out
Judge Thomas's window in the building directly above us. See,
(46:54):
that's his window right up there. He likes to have
the nicest view. I actually don't think the cop was
thinking when I was thinking at all. Yeah, sure, horticulturalist,
which I found pretty hilarious even at anyway, it's a
random memory. Well let's just say that even at one
I chose not to return to the lawn. I wonder
if anyone else who listens has funny stories like that. Well, thanks, Kate,
(47:18):
and I've got a letter here from Jill about our
ghosting episode for a while back, subject line ghosting since
eight She writes, Hello, ladies, hot on the heels of
your ghosting podcast. I recently started reading Mrs Beaton's Household Management,
a compilation of etiquette articles published as a single volume
in eighteen sixty one in England. Imagine my surprise when
(47:41):
I read this gem. When any of the carriages of
the party guests are announced, or the time for their
departure arrived, they should make a slight intimation to the hostess,
without however, exciting any observation that they're about to depart.
If this cannot be done, however, without creating too much bustle,
it will be better for the visitors to retire quietly
(48:02):
without taking their leave. Ghosting in relationships maybe new, but
people have been advised to duck out on parties for
nearly two centuries. Thank you so much for sending us that, Jim,
Jill and listeners. Now we want to hear from you mom.
Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email
address and for links all of our social media as
(48:24):
well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts with
our sources. So you can learn more about colorism, head
on over to stuff Mom Never told You dot com
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