November 21, 2025 • 42 mins
In this episode, JeffriAnne Wilder, PhD welcomes Margaret Hunter, PhD, professor of sociology and strategic advisor for faculty DEI initiatives at Santa Clara University, for a candid conversation about nearly three decades of research and advocacy surrounding colorism, racial justice, and institutional transformation. Dr. Hunter’s pioneering work illuminates how skin tone, beauty cues, and social capital operate within communities of color, and why colorism remains a multidimensional force shaping opportunity, belonging, and self-image. Together, they dissect the complexities of racism and colorism, the impact of pop culture and social media, and the challenges and hope presented by Gen Z’s unapologetic approach to equity, boundaries, and self-worth.
Find out more: Color Stories: Black Women and Colorism in the 21st Century by JeffriAnne Wilder, PhD
🔗 Find out more about Dr. JeffriAnne Wilder.
🔗 Follow the Center for DEI Innovation and Leadership on LinkedIn.
🌎Visit Oberlin College's website.
Podcast Produced by: Paradigm Media Group
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Welcome to the North Star.
I'm Dr.
Jeffrey Ann Wilder, ExecutiveDirector of the Oberlin Center
for DEI Innovation andLeadership.
This season, we're exploringdisruption, those transformative
moments when scholars andleaders challenge what society
takes for granted.
Nearly 10 years have passedsince the release of my book,
Color Story, Black Women andColorism in the 21st Century.
(00:22):
And to honor this milestone, I'mjoined by colleague and friend,
Dr.
Margaret Hunter, Professor ofSociology and Strategic Advisor
for DEI initiatives at SantaClara University.
Dr.
Hunter is a trailblazer incolorism studies, author of
Race, Gender, and the Politicsof Skin Tone, and one of the
(00:43):
foremost voices on how colorismoperates within communities of
color and across generations.
Her work interrogates how skintone shapes access, beauty,
belonging, and opportunity, andwhat it means to pursue equity
in a world shaped by both racismand colorism.
Welcome so much, Dr.
unknown (01:04):
Hunter.
SPEAKER_01 (01:05):
Thank you.
Thanks for the invitation to behere and talk with you.
SPEAKER_00 (01:08):
So it really is a pleasure.
And we actually saw each other afew months ago at the American
Sociological Association.
It had been a really long timesince I had been essays, but I
had the opportunity to be therebecause you hosted a panel
session on the future ofcolorism and the workplace.
(01:31):
And I have to say, it was, to behonest, one of the highlights of
my career to be in conversationat the ASA's at a panel, invited
panel, I might add, by you.
So thank you so much for that.
And before we get into your workon colorism, I have to, if you
(01:53):
wouldn't mind, I should have toshare a story that I shared at
ASA about how meaningful yourwork has been for me over the
course of my career as asociologist.
So while I was a graduatestudent, and it's been some
years since I was a graduatestudent, I always knew that I
(02:13):
wanted to study colorism becauseit was something that I learned
about as an undergraduatestudent at Allegheny College,
and it was so very intriguing tome.
And when I learned aboutcolorism sociologically, right?
So I'm a black woman, so I knewabout colorism just as a black
person.
But when I learned aboutcolorism as a sociologist, I
(02:35):
wanted to know as much as Icould.
So I tried to find as much as Icould find out about colorism.
And I wanted to soak it up likea sponge, right?
There anything about colorismthat any person had written
sociologically or really, reallyanything, I wanted to know as
much as I could.
(02:55):
And so when I got into mymaster's degree program, I
wanted to explore that for mymaster's thesis.
And I was so excited to sort ofjump right in.
And I got, I remember, I'llnever forget, being in my
advisor's office at an unnameduniversity in the Department of
Sociology, and just being soexcited to share with my advisor
(03:20):
that I already knew what I wasgoing to study, right?
I was going to study colorism,and this is why I wanted to
study it.
And these are all the peoplethat I've already learned about.
I'm so excited to learn more.
And my advisor kind of stoppedme, sort of in my tracks, really
interrupted me, disrupted me,and said, no, you can't study
that because colorism isn'tsociological.
(03:41):
And this person literally tookthe wind out of me, knocked the
wind out of me, right?
Was so devastated to hear thosewords.
Colorism isn't sociological.
And I just, I knew better,right?
Because I had already read allthese people, folks that looked
like me who were studyingcolorism, who had studied
(04:01):
colorism from Du Bois and onmany, many years prior to.
And this person told me, no, youcan't do that.
And I decided that, first ofall, that person was wrong
because I knew I knew better,and that that really wasn't the
best space for me.
But I made the decision in thatmoment that I was not going to
(04:25):
be deterred by someone whoreally didn't know, right, what
colorism was in a sociologicalcontext, and that I needed to be
in a space with other people whoactually knew that.
So I decided that I had tofinish that program.
It was a terminal master'sdegree program.
I had to finish that program.
(04:46):
So I had to do my master'sthesis on something else because
I had to finish that program andget out of that program so I can
go study and finish my PhDsomewhere else and be in a space
where I could.
And what got me through thatprogram and what got me through
finishing my doctorate elsewhereat the University of Florida was
people like you.
(05:06):
We had never met until a fewmonths ago.
But we want to go all the wayback to really the fall of 2000.
It's the fall of 2025 right now.
So we've rewind the tape 25years.
It was people like you and yourwork on colorism who I knew.
(05:27):
There are people who are doingthis work in sociology.
It's just that that person whotold me that colorism wasn't
sociological hadn't read yourwork and didn't know about you.
But it was the community ofscholars, of people who I hadn't
met, but I could read and hadaccess to, that really kept my
(05:49):
light going.
So I want to say thank you.
I had the opportunity to thankyou in Chicago at the ASAs, but
I want to take this opportunityto say thank you again for doing
that work, for continuing to dothe work, because I think that's
why we do this work associologists, right?
Because it is so very importantto bring the work that we do
(06:12):
from the margins to the center.
So thank you.
I believe in giving folks theirflowers while they're still
here, right?
Because your work in colorism isso in private.
So now that I've spent, I don'tknow, a really long time telling
that really long story, but tothank you for doing that work.
(06:33):
And so what I want to ask,because that was a really long
tee up to this question, whatgot you to the point?
I my book is called ColorStories.
And so I'm really interested inwhat got you so interested
sociologically in colorism, andwhat brought you into that
(06:54):
sociological exploration of skintone among women and folks of
color.
SPEAKER_01 (07:00):
Yeah.
Thank you, Jeffrey.
And I really appreciate you kindof tracing your own intellectual
history.
And I'm I'm humbled to be a partof it for sure.
And as you were talking aboutthe the obstacles and the kind
of lack of sociologicalimagination of some of the prior
mentors or thesis advisors orwhatever, it really did make me
(07:23):
think about how lucky I was tohave the advisor I had in
graduate school.
My advisor was Walter Allen.
He's a professor now ofeducation, but then of
sociology.
And he was just a really is justa tremendous, tremendous person,
scholar, et cetera.
And I came to graduate schoolwith an interest in colorism,
(07:47):
but I was interested in a lot ofthings about race.
And so there was a kind ofserendipity because he was
working on a project and he wasinterested in doing some
analysis of some existing datathat had a skin color variable.
And that really kind ofsolidified our working
relationship on skin color.
And that led to those probablyearly publications that you read
(08:10):
way back then.
Yeah.
I was really grateful toparticipate in.
So, yeah, how did I getinterested in this?
I'm a mixed-race person, blackand white.
And I grew up in a pretty blackand white city in Toledo, Ohio,
with a black father and a whitemother.
And I think my experiencegrowing up was there, I was
(08:35):
around a lot of black folks, andI was around a number of white
folks also.
And I think my sense of race wassort of shaped by that.
And I also, especially by highschool, I think, but even
earlier, was really attuned tothe privileges of light skin
that I felt like I wasexperiencing, especially in
(08:57):
relation to other black womenwho were close friends who are
darker than me.
Just in terms of simple thingslike who's asked to represent
our school at some kind ofpublic event, or who was asked
to give their remarks to theclass, you know, those kinds of
things.
And then I think what we all arevery attuned to are the
(09:20):
complicated color dynamics inthe dating experience,
especially for heterosexualyoung people, but for everyone
to the extent that the beautyregime is deeply invested in
colorism.
And that's as part of what I'vewritten about over the years.
So I think sort of my ownpersonal background combined
(09:42):
with a deep intellectualinterest in race on all topics
has kind of kept me in thisspace.
But I remember also having somemoments of real discouragement
over the years on this topic aswell.
I remember when I was finishingmy book and arguing with the
(10:04):
press about what the titleshould be.
And I wanted it to be colorstruck, colon, something,
something, somethingsociological.
And I remember that they werereally like, no one's gonna know
what your book is about.
People are gonna think it's likean art history book.
And it was such a sense of like,this topic is niche.
(10:26):
No one's gonna really know whatthis is.
And it was a real kind ofminimization that I was really
frustrated with.
I lost that battle and I endedup with a very, as you now know,
direct and bland title.
But I think there's there havebeen over the years lots of
opportunities for people to wantto push this to the side for
(10:47):
various reasons.
Though I would say in the pastcouple of decades, I mean, the
amount of work in this field hasjust exploded, and it's been
really wonderful and enrichingto read how much more we now
understand it beyond our sort ofown personal experiences and
anecdotes and stuff.
Like the level of sociologicalunderstanding is just really
(11:08):
incredible now.
SPEAKER_00 (11:09):
Yeah.
I recall while we were at theASA's at the panel, there was
the QA session, and there was adoctoral student who during the
QA stood up and a comment about,and it wasn't disparaging in any
way, shape, or form, but in hercritique of sort of the current
(11:32):
research on colorism, I thinkshe said something about the
current scholarship beingsociologically shallow, which I
I found to be very, it was likevery refreshing, right?
It was like, oh wow, that'sthat's it's kind of nice, right?
To get to the point wheresomeone like we've got enough
(11:52):
literature out there for someoneto say, y'all not doing enough,
right?
That it's actually kind of cool,right?
Like, oh, that's nice.
You know, to get at this point,like pushing us to to do like to
do more.
Well, there still isn't a wholelot out there, right?
But to get to that point wheresomeone is really pushing us
beyond, like, that's great.
(12:13):
We've talked enough aboutbeauty.
You've talked enough aboutbeauty standards and black-white
things, but like you need to geta little bit deeper.
We could sort of take a stepback, because I feel like we
sort of started our conversationwithin just, you know, heavily
entrenched within sociology forfolks who like us who are
(12:34):
sociologists, sort of take astep back for people who may not
be sociologists and and are arelistening to this conversation.
What are the major differencesbetween, and you said you kind
of stumbled into sociologybecause, or excuse me, stumbled
into colorism because there aretons of things that interest
interest you as a race scholar?
(12:55):
What are the the sort of maindifferences for folks who may
not understand the differencebetween racism and colorism,
right?
What are those main keydifferences there, right?
Because obviously they'reconnected, but then there are
also some really there's somenuances there and some
distinctions.
(13:15):
How do everyday people makethose nuances, make those
distinctions and but also makethose separations between racism
and colorism?
And how do people understand thedifference there?
SPEAKER_01 (13:27):
Yeah, I mean, I tend to think about race as and
racism as a problem of category.
So there's a lot of differentways that people are black and
they experience their blacknessin many different ways, and
they're all in the category ofblack.
And I feel like colorism is oneof the kind of embodied
(13:50):
experiences of blackness.
And I think it really matters.
And it's I'll use myself as anexample.
I identify as black, my dad isblack, my mom is white.
Sometimes people think I'mblack, sometimes they don't.
Kind of depends on the contextthat I'm in or the state that
I'm in.
And so my experiences of racismexist, and they're also
(14:12):
different than the experiencesof racism of other black people
who might be darker than me.
And so I like to think of itlike there's some commonalities.
We are all experiencinganti-Black racism at the hands
of the new federaladministration, for example.
On the other hand, the ways thatwe experience it differ a lot by
(14:35):
class, by educational status, byregion of where we live, by skin
tone, by gender.
So I've I see it as onedimension of how we experience
racism and a particularlyembodied dimension of that.
I'm curious about how you thinkabout it as someone who's been
(14:56):
deep in this work for so long aswell.
SPEAKER_00 (14:59):
So to me, they are, of course, part and parcel,
right?
So you cannot colorism is abyproduct of racism, right?
So it is a piece of that, maybea intended or unintended
consequence of that, right?
So it's a sort of an offspringof that, if you will.
(15:21):
So it's a connection of it.
So I think about it as anextension of that.
I also think about colorism likeracism, just sort of having
different sort of manifestationsand and sort of forms, right?
A lot of times what I find sofascinating about colorism, and
(15:41):
to me, one of the things I'vebeen very, very fascinated about
and very interested in, isreally wanting more people to
think about colorism from atheoretical perspective, right?
Spend more time thinking aboutthe manifestations of colorism
theoretically, right?
And and you spend a lot of timethinking about the
(16:02):
conceptualizations of colorism,right?
So to to to for us to thinkabout like how colorism happens
and how it functions andoperates more the various ways
in which that happens as opposedto the experiences of it, right?
(16:23):
Because we know it happens allthe time.
My biggest thing has always beenlet's spend more time thinking
about the ways in which thisoccurs, right?
And and look at look atcolorism, not necessarily from a
one-dimensional, but from amultidimensional sort of
(16:45):
multitude of experiences andthings as opposed to yeah, it's
this light skin, dark skinthing.
It's so much larger than that,it's so much bigger than that,
right?
I I'm blanking on the individualwho coined the term white
colorism, right?
But it's very fascinating,right, when you think about
(17:07):
because a lot of times it aslong as I've been studying and
talking about colorism, peoplethat the number one retort that
I've heard, and I'm sure you'veheard something very similar,
when you talk about colorism,right, people say, ha ha.
Okay, so now we know that folksof color do this to each other,
(17:27):
then it's something that likewhite folks are now off the
hook.
No, not at all.
Absolutely not.
This is something that everyoneparticipates in, right?
So let's get into that a littlebit more, right?
But you know, everyoneparticipates in upholding
colorism in the same way thatfolks participate in reinforcing
(17:47):
and upholding racism, right?
It's another layer to racism aswell.
So I think that's super duperfascinating.
I just I think that we can'thave there, there's never too
many conversations that you canhave about colorism because
there's just so much that folksdon't realize is colorism,
right?
If we could just I'd love to,I'd love to hear sort of one of
(18:11):
the maybe one or two of the mostfascinating questions that you
get when you when you talk aboutor you lecture on colorism.
What what what are some of thecommon things that you get from
people when they first learnabout colorism?
SPEAKER_01 (18:27):
I get the question or the the I actually don't
usually get it as a directquestion, but more like an
implicit kind of accusation,which is I think what you're
getting at.
The like, oh, well, if you alldo it to each other, then that's
really on you.
That's not on us, right?
As white people.
And so sometimes that comes up.
(18:48):
And I I think one of the waysthat I often talk about that
when I'm giving a public talk isthat the level of a white
engagement with colorism is sosignificant.
And the evidence for that arethese huge sociological outcomes
that we can see.
Like if it was just black peoplemessing with each other, we
(19:11):
wouldn't see these big incomegaps and gaps in educational
attainment and the housingmarket.
Like, those are things thatwhite people must be engaged in
to create that kind of outcome.
So I I try to help disabusepeople of their sense of like,
oh, this is on you all.
This isn't, this is your dirtylaundry, this isn't.
Because I think for white folks,their sense of their own racism
(19:36):
is becoming more clear to them.
I think that their sense oftheir engagement with colorism
is less obvious to them.
And so I think that's easier forthem to miss it.
And it it's, and this maybe isgetting at what you're saying
about like the conceptualizationof colorism.
Like this idea that lighterskinned women are just prettier
(20:00):
or darker skinned men are justmore dangerous is so deeply
embedded in our culturalconsciousness in the US that I
think a lot of people don'trealize the distinctions that
they're making, even whenthey're a little bit more
familiar with their sort ofracial distinctions by category.
Yeah.
And then the the other thingthat comes up quite a bit when I
(20:24):
give these kinds of talks, andeven in my own research came up
quite a bit, is the real andI've wrestled with how to
approach this.
So I I love to kind of get yourfeedback on it too.
But a lot of people will who arelight-skinned, sometimes mixed
race, sometimes not, will sharedeep pain about a sense of being
(20:50):
disconnected, ostracized,minimized as parts of the black
community.
And they feel a lot of hurt andfeelings around it.
And so there's a kind of waythat they want that to be in the
conversation on colorism.
And sometimes they thinktherefore it's all kind of
(21:15):
equal, equal on both sides.
And you see the exhale you justgave.
And that's been my reactionalso, and I've thought along I
feel like I've leaned towardminimizing over the years, like,
but there is something there forpeople in how they hear it.
(21:36):
And so I've written in some ofmy own work about the difference
between material discriminationand sort of affective
discomfort, which I think iswhere the feelings are.
And I'm not minimizing thosefeelings in the sense that they
exist.
We all know that those thingshappen sometimes.
I've experienced that myselfsometimes, but that's not quite
(21:59):
the same level of systematicmaterial discrimination.
So that comes up sometimes in mywork.
And if I'm giving a public talk,sometimes it's a teary
testimonial after the talk.
And so it can be difficult tokind of bring that back into the
conversation.
SPEAKER_00 (22:17):
Yeah, that's definitely something that has
has resonated a great deal forme throughout my research.
Actually, I just thought aboutthroughout the data collection
process.
And I was actually just sharingthis with a student a couple of
weeks ago.
I was going to, I started offdoing in-depth interviews.
And I thought that was like,okay, this is the best way for
(22:40):
me to gather my data.
And I learned pretty quicklythat was just a not the best
idea because for whateverreason, the dynamic, and I'm
brown skin, right?
At least that's how I I thinkthat's how I show up to the most
people.
But for whatever reason, it wascreating a very interesting
dynamic.
(23:00):
And I thought it was probablybetter.
So I ended up doing focusgroups.
And when I was doing focusgroups, I didn't really think at
the time about the compositionof the focus groups.
So I learned very like one focusgroup in.
Oh, this is not a good idea tohave mixed skin tone focus
(23:23):
groups.
It went left real quick,straight out the gate.
Like, this was not like, thankyou all so much for coming.
We're gonna get back togetheranother time.
It just was not, it did not endwell.
And I had to like retool.
Okay, we had to figure out a wayto get everyone in the focus
group who was similarly skintoned, right?
(23:47):
I mean, and you can even assume,can't assume that everyone who
is brown skin or identifies asbrown skin or the same levels of
brown skin is gonna have to, butto your point, it was just not,
it's not the same levels orperceived levels of experience
across skin tone variations.
(24:08):
And that's a very hard thing tobroach, repair, heal.
It's very, very difficult.
And then this, I never reallyended up publishing um this
data.
And I thought at some point I'dcome back to it, and then gosh,
here we are 15, 20 years later.
Mother, daughter experiences,particularly when you have moms
(24:28):
and daughters who are different,skin talked and that sort of
thing.
That's pretty fascinating.
And at this point, the the folkswho I interviewed are older
millennials, right?
And so now you get Gen Z.
So these folks are like in their40s and nobody cares about us
about them anymore.
But yeah, I mean, the focus, Imean, they're not young anymore,
(24:49):
right?
The focus is now all on Gen Z.
But you're absolutely right.
This sort of experiences thatfolks have and and what folks
deem as I don't want to put painin quotes because that's that's
not fair.
But there are varying perceptsperceptions about levels of pain
across that spectrum, which isall real and valid, but it is
(25:13):
just there are varying levels ofthat, which is very interesting.
And there's just so manydynamics to colorism that I
don't even think that we haven'teven scratched the surface on.
We just we just haven't.
And then when you think aboutstrictly skin tone, okay, let's
talk about skin tone and hair.
And I mean, there are just allthese different variants there.
(25:37):
And I have two girls, and Iwrite about at least in my book,
my oldest daughter was uh born.
My youngest daughter is four, soshe wasn't born, but you know,
just having my oldest daughterand all the comments that people
made about my daughter.
My youngest daughter is uhlighter skin tone and just so
many, it's just so fascinating.
(25:57):
Very, very fascinating.
We gotta collect some more data.
It's very, very interesting.
SPEAKER_01 (26:02):
I think it would be interesting to do a project on
this sort of and I'm sure somepeople have, but that really
focuses on the sort of affectiveexperiences of colorism.
Because I think I my gut feelingis like what's happened is that
light-skinned women inparticular have kind of cornered
(26:22):
the market on the affectivepart, and that it's sort of like
the pain of being misunderstoodas stuck up because you're
light-skinned and you thinkyou're better, is somehow
equated to the pain of beingminimized and excluded because
(26:44):
you're darker.
And I'm not sure those twothings are quite equal, even
though it's interesting toexplore them both.
You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00 (26:52):
Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01 (26:54):
I don't know if you saw Light Girls, Dark Girls and
Light Girls, those twodocumentaries.
I got to be involved in LightGirls, and I really, really,
really liked Dark Girls a lot.
And I thought it was really welldone and interesting.
And Light Girls, I liked aspectsof it, and then parts of it I
thought I didn't love as much.
(27:15):
And that was one part of it, isthat I felt like there was um
focus on the sort of equating oflike two sides of the same coin,
like the grass is alwaysgreener.
And I I don't think that theyprobably intended to do it that
way, but it felt like that alittle bit to me.
And I felt like they sort offocused on some extreme stories
(27:38):
of negative things that hadhappened to some light-skinned
celebrities.
And I think also the fact thatin light girls, most of the
people they interviewed werecelebrities.
And in dark girls, most of thepeople I interviewed were
regular people.
And I mean, that in and ofitself is the the sociological
answer right there about the wayprivilege works around color.
SPEAKER_00 (27:58):
And that's incredibly problematic.
And now that I'm and now thatyou said that, I'm I'm recalling
it now.
And it is a bit problematic.
Well, it's more than a bitproblematic, right?
Let's just name that.
And if you think about, so nowyou insert social media and this
whole popular culture aspectaround that, which is something
that I've been very, veryinterested in as it, and I'm
(28:20):
sure you have been too, as itrelates to how colorism itself
sort of is how it lives, right?
So how colorist messages get outand sort of get replayed a lot
on social media.
I think that really that aspectof it gets out quite a bit.
And you think about just beyondsocial media, music lyrics and
(28:41):
those things, I think get playedout even more.
And I think it would be such afascinating thing to explore
even further.
But they are not the same,right?
It is not the same.
You have to be very, verycareful when you start.
You cannot conflate the two.
They're just not.
They are not the same.
And it's a very it does evenmore damage to the experiences
(29:05):
of darker skinned women.
SPEAKER_01 (29:07):
That's right.
I I agree with you 100%.
I mean, in regard to socialmedia, I mean, there's so much
to say, but one of the things Igot really interested in a few
years ago was the use offilters.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, marketed as sort of beautyfilters, but really just
(29:28):
opportunities to lighten,brighten, whiten one's skin.
There there were so many.
I mean, just thousands uponthousands upon thousands created
in all different apps and alldifferent platforms.
It was really fascinating.
And this kind of like brushingit under the rug as just one
more sort of beauty tool wasreally wild to me.
SPEAKER_00 (29:52):
So, for those folks who may not know, one of your
earlier ideas, specificallywithin the context of colorism,
is that.
That light skin functions as aform of social capital, and that
for women of color, they theyform this notion of a light
skin, sort of forms this idea ofa beauty cue, and that women
(30:14):
fall along the beauty cue, andthat light skin falls at the top
of the beauty cue.
Would you would you mindunpacking those two ideas for
us?
SPEAKER_01 (30:22):
When I first wrote about light skin as social
capital, especially for women, Iwas really trying to argue with
data that being lighter skinnedis like a resource to have on
the dating and marriage market.
And so it functions the way acollege degree functions or
(30:46):
middle class status functions,that it puts you up higher and
makes you more competitive formore elite partners.
And I think that was somethingthat people talked about
casually, kind of colloquially,but there wasn't really much
data for, or at least no one hadreally like looked at it.
And once we started looking atit, it was like, oh wow, you can
(31:09):
actually see this in the surveydata.
Like it was to me, I was blownaway by that.
And from there, I argued aboutthis idea of the beauty cue,
like a cue meaning like a line,that in a patriarchal racist
society like the United States,women's appearance matters
(31:32):
tremendously in their marriageability or date ability, and
their bodies have thisoutweighed importance in their
own status.
And so there's like a cue of themost desirable women, highest
status women by beauty at thetop and lower at the bottom, and
(31:53):
that skin color plays a big rolein this ranking.
So that you might not have acollege degree, but if you have
light skin, that puts you uphigh, right?
And that was the kind ofargument that I was making.
We already can see very clearlya racial aspect to what I would
call a duty cue, where whitewomen are seen as highly
(32:14):
desirable and beautiful andwomen of color less so.
But even among women of color, Ithink there's a cue there that
operates.
And I mean, the evidence for itis all around us, from who was
your homecoming queen at yourschool to who's on the
television, to who's anInstagram baddie.
(32:36):
I mean, all of it is the sameand everybody looks sort of
similar.
And then I would argue with theincreasing investment in
cosmetic procedures and otherkinds of things that our ability
to purchase racial capital hasjust gotten bigger and bigger.
(32:58):
So maybe you weren't at the topof the queue by birth, but hey,
you can get some filler in theright places and do some
procedures and get your nosedone and your eyes and move
yourself right up.
And I'm not saying it, and thisis an important point that I
usually make whenever I'm givinga talk, is like I'm not saying
it in a judgmental way, like,oh, all these people are trying
(33:20):
to do cosmetic procedures.
What I'm saying is these arerational acts in a society that
really values women's bodies incertain kinds of ways.
So why, why wouldn't you try tolighten your skin?
And why wouldn't you maybe takesome even potential big risks in
order to do that?
Why wouldn't you get your nosedone?
Why wouldn't you have your lipsdone, your your eyelids, you
(33:42):
know, et cetera, et cetera?
That these are these aren't actsof vanity, these are acts of
rational upward social mobilityin a society that overvalues
women's bodies.
SPEAKER_00 (33:55):
I'm so glad you brought that up because you know
I was gonna ask you.
That's like my next question.
Because what about, you know,um, you know, we live in a BBL
culture and a plastic surgeryculture from Cardi B to Lotto to
just pick a housewife regardlessof their their location, whether
(34:17):
they're in Potomac or Atlanta orJersey or what have you.
I mean, we and regardless oftheir their their race, right?
Everyone seems to be doing that.
You know, where is the colorism?
If we're sort of thinking aboutpulling out and teasing out the
colorism there, not necessarilythe colorism, but if we're we're
sort of teasing out the aspectsof maybe the the skin tone
(34:41):
pieces or the the the socialcapital, the skin tone is the
social capital, because we don'tnecessarily know if colorism is
there.
Well, listen, we know it'sthere.
We know it's there.
It's always there.
Some ladies on Potomac.
But anyway, if we're to sort ofinsert that into those pieces,
where does where does theconversation lead us then?
SPEAKER_01 (35:01):
Yeah, I I mean I really think that these shows,
these various kinds of shows,various kinds of reality TV
shows in particular, have reallynormalized the manipulation of
the body in capitalism, really.
I mean, it is it is a way ofviewing the body as another
natural resource to be mined andmanipulated for economic gain.
(35:26):
And and again, I'm not castingaspersions on individual people,
like this is a culturalphenomenon as part of the
structure of the way our societyis.
So people are making rationaldecisions within it, but those
decisions also havecomplications and they have
implications for everyone.
So I do feel like one of thethings I'll hear from people
(35:46):
sometimes is like, hey, you knowwhat?
If you got a cream that makesyour skin lighter or makes your
hair straighter, or you want toget your nose done or whatever,
like good for you.
Like, get that bag.
Like, you got to do what yougotta do to survive.
I don't agree with that.
And I'll tell you why.
Because when you do that as anindividual, you are reinforcing
(36:08):
a system that makes it harderfor everybody else.
So, like, okay, celebrity ex, goahead and do all those things.
But that means that all theother people who are dark
skinned, who have big lips, whohave wide noses, the all the
Asian women who have an eye whohave don't have an eyelid fold,
(36:29):
you are reinforcing adevaluation of those bodies.
And so I feel like, yeah, youcan do it and you can benefit
from it, but it isn't withouteffects on everybody else.
And if you're willing to takethat, fine, that's okay.
But I don't think we shoulddelude ourselves into acting
like it doesn't affect anybodyelse.
SPEAKER_00 (36:51):
Especially for younger people, right?
Especially people like me whohave teenagers who are still
trying to like make their way orfigure this all out, who aren't
quite yet there as far as comingof age, who don't really have
that all figured out.
I think that definitely, or justeveryday folks who are still
trying to figure though all ofthose things out.
(37:13):
Gosh, I just, man, I wish we hadmore time.
Time.
Gosh, I think we need a part twoat some point.
I just wish we had more timebecause this is literally my
favorite topic, right?
So I do want to ask you oneother question before we we we
kind of wrap, and that's reallywhat do you think is the most
(37:34):
noticeable thing that'sdifferent about today's college
students?
So, how would you characterizeGen Z?
How are they the most differentcompared to earlier generations?
SPEAKER_01 (37:49):
I feel like people tease me when I say this, but I
love Gen Z.
I just feel like I've been doingsome research and leading a
research team of Gen Zresearchers about their
experiences in college.
So I've been spending a littlebit of time on this, and I just
feel like Gen Z is telling GenX, and that's my generation.
(38:13):
Y'all need to hold on a minute.
And like they're just, I feellike they just really give us a
reality check.
Like, why are you workingyourselves to death?
For what?
And I mean, they're like, wegive them a hard time, like, oh,
Gen Z, like they don't want towork, whatever.
Why I I think what they'resaying to us is, am I working my
fingers to the bone for not thatmuch money in a company I'm not
(38:38):
sure I believe in any way, andgiving up much of my life and my
health for it?
And I think for us in Gen X,like that hurts because it cuts
a little close to the bone.
Like, ooh, Gen Z collegestudents, they don't want to
work for free.
You want them to deal withracial issues at the university
and help be part of thesolution, fine, but you better
(38:58):
pay them.
Pay them.
But I feel like they've reallytouched on things that prior
generations have overlooked ornot thought of or minimized, and
they don't like to put up with alot of emotional mess.
I feel like they'll be like, goto therapy.
Because this is a generation whoare much more familiar with
(39:19):
therapy than like their parents'generation, right?
So I've raised two gents years.
I have a 22-year-old and a19-year-old, so I am well versed
in their criticisms of ourgeneration.
But I really do deeplyappreciate them.
I really do.
And I feel like I learn a lotfrom my students, and I'm
grateful really to beinteracting with them on a
(39:40):
regular basis.
SPEAKER_00 (39:41):
They're like they're old souls, but and they will get
you together now.
They will get you together withit.
Thank you.
Yeah.
I I completely agree with that.
They are not afraid to tell youlike that you need to get it
together.
SPEAKER_01 (39:55):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (39:55):
Yeah.
But you do have to pay them.
I completely agree with that.
Yeah.
I literally just went throughthat a couple weeks ago.
Oh, yeah.
But um, here's my rate.
Like, oh, that oh, okay.
Let me look at my budget.
SPEAKER_01 (40:08):
Let's see what I can do.
I did all kind of free work asan undergrad.
And when I look back, I'm like,why did I do that?
I mean, I just yes, absolutelyfor free.
SPEAKER_00 (40:16):
Okay.
Two, no, three rapid firequestions.
We always end with three rapidfire questions.
Ready?
Something that's made you smilebig this week.
I was saying this week.
It is Monday.
So something that has made yousmile big this month.
We'll say that this month.
SPEAKER_01 (40:31):
My daughter was just home from college over the
weekend visiting, and seeingyour children grow and their
increased sense ofself-awareness and efficacy in
the world will just bring you toyour knees with joy.
SPEAKER_00 (40:46):
Every time I ask that question, every time, the
person responds with family.
Every single time.
Oh, that's good.
At least okay.
Something that keeps you up atnight.
SPEAKER_01 (40:57):
Impending authoritarianism,
anti-immigrant, anti-transagenda.
Yeah, that that is reallykeeping me up at night.
SPEAKER_00 (41:05):
Yeah.
For sure.
And as we look ahead at the nextuh, let's say the next
generation of colorism research.
What questions do you thinkstill demand our attention?
SPEAKER_01 (41:24):
I think there's still a lot to be done around
colorism in the criminal justicesystem.
And I feel like that like stuffaround criminal justice and
sociology in general has reallytaken off over the past like 15
years or so.
So I'm really looking forward toseeing more and more work there.
And then I think the other pieceis gonna be around manipulation
(41:47):
of the body, you know, increaseduse of um cosmetic procedures
and AI.
I think those will be the areas,and obviously people are already
starting that work, and I thinkwe're just gonna see a real
explosion there, and I'm excitedto see what people learn.
SPEAKER_00 (42:01):
Same thing.
SPEAKER_01 (42:02):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (42:03):
Thank you so much to Dr.
Margaret Hunter.
It has always been a pleasure.
And for me, again, just acontinued full circle moment.
I hope we have many, many more.
So I appreciate Zephyr Ann.
Thank you for having me on theshow, really.
Welcome to the North Star.
I'm Dr.
Jeffrey Ann Wilder, ExecutiveDirector of the Oberlin Center
for DEI Innovation andLeadership.
This season, we're exploringdisruption, those transformative
moments when scholars andleaders challenge what society
takes for granted.
Nearly 10 years have passedsince the release of my book,
Color Story, Black Women andColorism in the 21st Century.
(00:22):
And to honor this milestone, I'mjoined by colleague and friend,
Dr.
Margaret Hunter, Professor ofSociology and Strategic Advisor
for DEI initiatives at SantaClara University.
Dr.
Hunter is a trailblazer incolorism studies, author of
Race, Gender, and the Politicsof Skin Tone, and one of the
(00:43):
foremost voices on how colorismoperates within communities of
color and across generations.
Her work interrogates how skintone shapes access, beauty,
belonging, and opportunity, andwhat it means to pursue equity
in a world shaped by both racismand colorism.
Welcome so much, Dr.
unknown (01:04):
Hunter.
SPEAKER_01 (01:05):
Thank you.
Thanks for the invitation to behere and talk with you.
SPEAKER_00 (01:08):
So it really is a pleasure.
And we actually saw each other afew months ago at the American
Sociological Association.
It had been a really long timesince I had been essays, but I
had the opportunity to be therebecause you hosted a panel
session on the future ofcolorism and the workplace.
(01:31):
And I have to say, it was, to behonest, one of the highlights of
my career to be in conversationat the ASA's at a panel, invited
panel, I might add, by you.
So thank you so much for that.
And before we get into your workon colorism, I have to, if you
(01:53):
wouldn't mind, I should have toshare a story that I shared at
ASA about how meaningful yourwork has been for me over the
course of my career as asociologist.
So while I was a graduatestudent, and it's been some
years since I was a graduatestudent, I always knew that I
(02:13):
wanted to study colorism becauseit was something that I learned
about as an undergraduatestudent at Allegheny College,
and it was so very intriguing tome.
And when I learned aboutcolorism sociologically, right?
So I'm a black woman, so I knewabout colorism just as a black
person.
But when I learned aboutcolorism as a sociologist, I
(02:35):
wanted to know as much as Icould.
So I tried to find as much as Icould find out about colorism.
And I wanted to soak it up likea sponge, right?
There anything about colorismthat any person had written
sociologically or really, reallyanything, I wanted to know as
much as I could.
(02:55):
And so when I got into mymaster's degree program, I
wanted to explore that for mymaster's thesis.
And I was so excited to sort ofjump right in.
And I got, I remember, I'llnever forget, being in my
advisor's office at an unnameduniversity in the Department of
Sociology, and just being soexcited to share with my advisor
(03:20):
that I already knew what I wasgoing to study, right?
I was going to study colorism,and this is why I wanted to
study it.
And these are all the peoplethat I've already learned about.
I'm so excited to learn more.
And my advisor kind of stoppedme, sort of in my tracks, really
interrupted me, disrupted me,and said, no, you can't study
that because colorism isn'tsociological.
(03:41):
And this person literally tookthe wind out of me, knocked the
wind out of me, right?
Was so devastated to hear thosewords.
Colorism isn't sociological.
And I just, I knew better,right?
Because I had already read allthese people, folks that looked
like me who were studyingcolorism, who had studied
(04:01):
colorism from Du Bois and onmany, many years prior to.
And this person told me, no, youcan't do that.
And I decided that, first ofall, that person was wrong
because I knew I knew better,and that that really wasn't the
best space for me.
But I made the decision in thatmoment that I was not going to
(04:25):
be deterred by someone whoreally didn't know, right, what
colorism was in a sociologicalcontext, and that I needed to be
in a space with other people whoactually knew that.
So I decided that I had tofinish that program.
It was a terminal master'sdegree program.
I had to finish that program.
(04:46):
So I had to do my master'sthesis on something else because
I had to finish that program andget out of that program so I can
go study and finish my PhDsomewhere else and be in a space
where I could.
And what got me through thatprogram and what got me through
finishing my doctorate elsewhereat the University of Florida was
people like you.
(05:06):
We had never met until a fewmonths ago.
But we want to go all the wayback to really the fall of 2000.
It's the fall of 2025 right now.
So we've rewind the tape 25years.
It was people like you and yourwork on colorism who I knew.
(05:27):
There are people who are doingthis work in sociology.
It's just that that person whotold me that colorism wasn't
sociological hadn't read yourwork and didn't know about you.
But it was the community ofscholars, of people who I hadn't
met, but I could read and hadaccess to, that really kept my
(05:49):
light going.
So I want to say thank you.
I had the opportunity to thankyou in Chicago at the ASAs, but
I want to take this opportunityto say thank you again for doing
that work, for continuing to dothe work, because I think that's
why we do this work associologists, right?
Because it is so very importantto bring the work that we do
(06:12):
from the margins to the center.
So thank you.
I believe in giving folks theirflowers while they're still
here, right?
Because your work in colorism isso in private.
So now that I've spent, I don'tknow, a really long time telling
that really long story, but tothank you for doing that work.
(06:33):
And so what I want to ask,because that was a really long
tee up to this question, whatgot you to the point?
I my book is called ColorStories.
And so I'm really interested inwhat got you so interested
sociologically in colorism, andwhat brought you into that
(06:54):
sociological exploration of skintone among women and folks of
color.
SPEAKER_01 (07:00):
Yeah.
Thank you, Jeffrey.
And I really appreciate you kindof tracing your own intellectual
history.
And I'm I'm humbled to be a partof it for sure.
And as you were talking aboutthe the obstacles and the kind
of lack of sociologicalimagination of some of the prior
mentors or thesis advisors orwhatever, it really did make me
(07:23):
think about how lucky I was tohave the advisor I had in
graduate school.
My advisor was Walter Allen.
He's a professor now ofeducation, but then of
sociology.
And he was just a really is justa tremendous, tremendous person,
scholar, et cetera.
And I came to graduate schoolwith an interest in colorism,
(07:47):
but I was interested in a lot ofthings about race.
And so there was a kind ofserendipity because he was
working on a project and he wasinterested in doing some
analysis of some existing datathat had a skin color variable.
And that really kind ofsolidified our working
relationship on skin color.
And that led to those probablyearly publications that you read
(08:10):
way back then.
Yeah.
I was really grateful toparticipate in.
So, yeah, how did I getinterested in this?
I'm a mixed-race person, blackand white.
And I grew up in a pretty blackand white city in Toledo, Ohio,
with a black father and a whitemother.
And I think my experiencegrowing up was there, I was
(08:35):
around a lot of black folks, andI was around a number of white
folks also.
And I think my sense of race wassort of shaped by that.
And I also, especially by highschool, I think, but even
earlier, was really attuned tothe privileges of light skin
that I felt like I wasexperiencing, especially in
(08:57):
relation to other black womenwho were close friends who are
darker than me.
Just in terms of simple thingslike who's asked to represent
our school at some kind ofpublic event, or who was asked
to give their remarks to theclass, you know, those kinds of
things.
And then I think what we all arevery attuned to are the
(09:20):
complicated color dynamics inthe dating experience,
especially for heterosexualyoung people, but for everyone
to the extent that the beautyregime is deeply invested in
colorism.
And that's as part of what I'vewritten about over the years.
So I think sort of my ownpersonal background combined
(09:42):
with a deep intellectualinterest in race on all topics
has kind of kept me in thisspace.
But I remember also having somemoments of real discouragement
over the years on this topic aswell.
I remember when I was finishingmy book and arguing with the
(10:04):
press about what the titleshould be.
And I wanted it to be colorstruck, colon, something,
something, somethingsociological.
And I remember that they werereally like, no one's gonna know
what your book is about.
People are gonna think it's likean art history book.
And it was such a sense of like,this topic is niche.
(10:26):
No one's gonna really know whatthis is.
And it was a real kind ofminimization that I was really
frustrated with.
I lost that battle and I endedup with a very, as you now know,
direct and bland title.
But I think there's there havebeen over the years lots of
opportunities for people to wantto push this to the side for
(10:47):
various reasons.
Though I would say in the pastcouple of decades, I mean, the
amount of work in this field hasjust exploded, and it's been
really wonderful and enrichingto read how much more we now
understand it beyond our sort ofown personal experiences and
anecdotes and stuff.
Like the level of sociologicalunderstanding is just really
(11:08):
incredible now.
SPEAKER_00 (11:09):
Yeah.
I recall while we were at theASA's at the panel, there was
the QA session, and there was adoctoral student who during the
QA stood up and a comment about,and it wasn't disparaging in any
way, shape, or form, but in hercritique of sort of the current
(11:32):
research on colorism, I thinkshe said something about the
current scholarship beingsociologically shallow, which I
I found to be very, it was likevery refreshing, right?
It was like, oh wow, that'sthat's it's kind of nice, right?
To get to the point wheresomeone like we've got enough
(11:52):
literature out there for someoneto say, y'all not doing enough,
right?
That it's actually kind of cool,right?
Like, oh, that's nice.
You know, to get at this point,like pushing us to to do like to
do more.
Well, there still isn't a wholelot out there, right?
But to get to that point wheresomeone is really pushing us
beyond, like, that's great.
(12:13):
We've talked enough aboutbeauty.
You've talked enough aboutbeauty standards and black-white
things, but like you need to geta little bit deeper.
We could sort of take a stepback, because I feel like we
sort of started our conversationwithin just, you know, heavily
entrenched within sociology forfolks who like us who are
(12:34):
sociologists, sort of take astep back for people who may not
be sociologists and and are arelistening to this conversation.
What are the major differencesbetween, and you said you kind
of stumbled into sociologybecause, or excuse me, stumbled
into colorism because there aretons of things that interest
interest you as a race scholar?
(12:55):
What are the the sort of maindifferences for folks who may
not understand the differencebetween racism and colorism,
right?
What are those main keydifferences there, right?
Because obviously they'reconnected, but then there are
also some really there's somenuances there and some
distinctions.
(13:15):
How do everyday people makethose nuances, make those
distinctions and but also makethose separations between racism
and colorism?
And how do people understand thedifference there?
SPEAKER_01 (13:27):
Yeah, I mean, I tend to think about race as and
racism as a problem of category.
So there's a lot of differentways that people are black and
they experience their blacknessin many different ways, and
they're all in the category ofblack.
And I feel like colorism is oneof the kind of embodied
(13:50):
experiences of blackness.
And I think it really matters.
And it's I'll use myself as anexample.
I identify as black, my dad isblack, my mom is white.
Sometimes people think I'mblack, sometimes they don't.
Kind of depends on the contextthat I'm in or the state that
I'm in.
And so my experiences of racismexist, and they're also
(14:12):
different than the experiencesof racism of other black people
who might be darker than me.
And so I like to think of itlike there's some commonalities.
We are all experiencinganti-Black racism at the hands
of the new federaladministration, for example.
On the other hand, the ways thatwe experience it differ a lot by
(14:35):
class, by educational status, byregion of where we live, by skin
tone, by gender.
So I've I see it as onedimension of how we experience
racism and a particularlyembodied dimension of that.
I'm curious about how you thinkabout it as someone who's been
(14:56):
deep in this work for so long aswell.
SPEAKER_00 (14:59):
So to me, they are, of course, part and parcel,
right?
So you cannot colorism is abyproduct of racism, right?
So it is a piece of that, maybea intended or unintended
consequence of that, right?
So it's a sort of an offspringof that, if you will.
(15:21):
So it's a connection of it.
So I think about it as anextension of that.
I also think about colorism likeracism, just sort of having
different sort of manifestationsand and sort of forms, right?
A lot of times what I find sofascinating about colorism, and
(15:41):
to me, one of the things I'vebeen very, very fascinated about
and very interested in, isreally wanting more people to
think about colorism from atheoretical perspective, right?
Spend more time thinking aboutthe manifestations of colorism
theoretically, right?
And and you spend a lot of timethinking about the
(16:02):
conceptualizations of colorism,right?
So to to to for us to thinkabout like how colorism happens
and how it functions andoperates more the various ways
in which that happens as opposedto the experiences of it, right?
(16:23):
Because we know it happens allthe time.
My biggest thing has always beenlet's spend more time thinking
about the ways in which thisoccurs, right?
And and look at look atcolorism, not necessarily from a
one-dimensional, but from amultidimensional sort of
(16:45):
multitude of experiences andthings as opposed to yeah, it's
this light skin, dark skinthing.
It's so much larger than that,it's so much bigger than that,
right?
I I'm blanking on the individualwho coined the term white
colorism, right?
But it's very fascinating,right, when you think about
(17:07):
because a lot of times it aslong as I've been studying and
talking about colorism, peoplethat the number one retort that
I've heard, and I'm sure you'veheard something very similar,
when you talk about colorism,right, people say, ha ha.
Okay, so now we know that folksof color do this to each other,
(17:27):
then it's something that likewhite folks are now off the
hook.
No, not at all.
Absolutely not.
This is something that everyoneparticipates in, right?
So let's get into that a littlebit more, right?
But you know, everyoneparticipates in upholding
colorism in the same way thatfolks participate in reinforcing
(17:47):
and upholding racism, right?
It's another layer to racism aswell.
So I think that's super duperfascinating.
I just I think that we can'thave there, there's never too
many conversations that you canhave about colorism because
there's just so much that folksdon't realize is colorism,
right?
If we could just I'd love to,I'd love to hear sort of one of
(18:11):
the maybe one or two of the mostfascinating questions that you
get when you when you talk aboutor you lecture on colorism.
What what what are some of thecommon things that you get from
people when they first learnabout colorism?
SPEAKER_01 (18:27):
I get the question or the the I actually don't
usually get it as a directquestion, but more like an
implicit kind of accusation,which is I think what you're
getting at.
The like, oh, well, if you alldo it to each other, then that's
really on you.
That's not on us, right?
As white people.
And so sometimes that comes up.
(18:48):
And I I think one of the waysthat I often talk about that
when I'm giving a public talk isthat the level of a white
engagement with colorism is sosignificant.
And the evidence for that arethese huge sociological outcomes
that we can see.
Like if it was just black peoplemessing with each other, we
(19:11):
wouldn't see these big incomegaps and gaps in educational
attainment and the housingmarket.
Like, those are things thatwhite people must be engaged in
to create that kind of outcome.
So I I try to help disabusepeople of their sense of like,
oh, this is on you all.
This isn't, this is your dirtylaundry, this isn't.
Because I think for white folks,their sense of their own racism
(19:36):
is becoming more clear to them.
I think that their sense oftheir engagement with colorism
is less obvious to them.
And so I think that's easier forthem to miss it.
And it it's, and this maybe isgetting at what you're saying
about like the conceptualizationof colorism.
Like this idea that lighterskinned women are just prettier
(20:00):
or darker skinned men are justmore dangerous is so deeply
embedded in our culturalconsciousness in the US that I
think a lot of people don'trealize the distinctions that
they're making, even whenthey're a little bit more
familiar with their sort ofracial distinctions by category.
Yeah.
And then the the other thingthat comes up quite a bit when I
(20:24):
give these kinds of talks, andeven in my own research came up
quite a bit, is the real andI've wrestled with how to
approach this.
So I I love to kind of get yourfeedback on it too.
But a lot of people will who arelight-skinned, sometimes mixed
race, sometimes not, will sharedeep pain about a sense of being
(20:50):
disconnected, ostracized,minimized as parts of the black
community.
And they feel a lot of hurt andfeelings around it.
And so there's a kind of waythat they want that to be in the
conversation on colorism.
And sometimes they thinktherefore it's all kind of
(21:15):
equal, equal on both sides.
And you see the exhale you justgave.
And that's been my reactionalso, and I've thought along I
feel like I've leaned towardminimizing over the years, like,
but there is something there forpeople in how they hear it.
(21:36):
And so I've written in some ofmy own work about the difference
between material discriminationand sort of affective
discomfort, which I think iswhere the feelings are.
And I'm not minimizing thosefeelings in the sense that they
exist.
We all know that those thingshappen sometimes.
I've experienced that myselfsometimes, but that's not quite
(21:59):
the same level of systematicmaterial discrimination.
So that comes up sometimes in mywork.
And if I'm giving a public talk,sometimes it's a teary
testimonial after the talk.
And so it can be difficult tokind of bring that back into the
conversation.
SPEAKER_00 (22:17):
Yeah, that's definitely something that has
has resonated a great deal forme throughout my research.
Actually, I just thought aboutthroughout the data collection
process.
And I was actually just sharingthis with a student a couple of
weeks ago.
I was going to, I started offdoing in-depth interviews.
And I thought that was like,okay, this is the best way for
(22:40):
me to gather my data.
And I learned pretty quicklythat was just a not the best
idea because for whateverreason, the dynamic, and I'm
brown skin, right?
At least that's how I I thinkthat's how I show up to the most
people.
But for whatever reason, it wascreating a very interesting
dynamic.
(23:00):
And I thought it was probablybetter.
So I ended up doing focusgroups.
And when I was doing focusgroups, I didn't really think at
the time about the compositionof the focus groups.
So I learned very like one focusgroup in.
Oh, this is not a good idea tohave mixed skin tone focus
(23:23):
groups.
It went left real quick,straight out the gate.
Like, this was not like, thankyou all so much for coming.
We're gonna get back togetheranother time.
It just was not, it did not endwell.
And I had to like retool.
Okay, we had to figure out a wayto get everyone in the focus
group who was similarly skintoned, right?
(23:47):
I mean, and you can even assume,can't assume that everyone who
is brown skin or identifies asbrown skin or the same levels of
brown skin is gonna have to, butto your point, it was just not,
it's not the same levels orperceived levels of experience
across skin tone variations.
(24:08):
And that's a very hard thing tobroach, repair, heal.
It's very, very difficult.
And then this, I never reallyended up publishing um this
data.
And I thought at some point I'dcome back to it, and then gosh,
here we are 15, 20 years later.
Mother, daughter experiences,particularly when you have moms
(24:28):
and daughters who are different,skin talked and that sort of
thing.
That's pretty fascinating.
And at this point, the the folkswho I interviewed are older
millennials, right?
And so now you get Gen Z.
So these folks are like in their40s and nobody cares about us
about them anymore.
But yeah, I mean, the focus, Imean, they're not young anymore,
(24:49):
right?
The focus is now all on Gen Z.
But you're absolutely right.
This sort of experiences thatfolks have and and what folks
deem as I don't want to put painin quotes because that's that's
not fair.
But there are varying perceptsperceptions about levels of pain
across that spectrum, which isall real and valid, but it is
(25:13):
just there are varying levels ofthat, which is very interesting.
And there's just so manydynamics to colorism that I
don't even think that we haven'teven scratched the surface on.
We just we just haven't.
And then when you think aboutstrictly skin tone, okay, let's
talk about skin tone and hair.
And I mean, there are just allthese different variants there.
(25:37):
And I have two girls, and Iwrite about at least in my book,
my oldest daughter was uh born.
My youngest daughter is four, soshe wasn't born, but you know,
just having my oldest daughterand all the comments that people
made about my daughter.
My youngest daughter is uhlighter skin tone and just so
many, it's just so fascinating.
(25:57):
Very, very fascinating.
We gotta collect some more data.
It's very, very interesting.
SPEAKER_01 (26:02):
I think it would be interesting to do a project on
this sort of and I'm sure somepeople have, but that really
focuses on the sort of affectiveexperiences of colorism.
Because I think I my gut feelingis like what's happened is that
light-skinned women inparticular have kind of cornered
(26:22):
the market on the affectivepart, and that it's sort of like
the pain of being misunderstoodas stuck up because you're
light-skinned and you thinkyou're better, is somehow
equated to the pain of beingminimized and excluded because
(26:44):
you're darker.
And I'm not sure those twothings are quite equal, even
though it's interesting toexplore them both.
You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00 (26:52):
Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01 (26:54):
I don't know if you saw Light Girls, Dark Girls and
Light Girls, those twodocumentaries.
I got to be involved in LightGirls, and I really, really,
really liked Dark Girls a lot.
And I thought it was really welldone and interesting.
And Light Girls, I liked aspectsof it, and then parts of it I
thought I didn't love as much.
(27:15):
And that was one part of it, isthat I felt like there was um
focus on the sort of equating oflike two sides of the same coin,
like the grass is alwaysgreener.
And I I don't think that theyprobably intended to do it that
way, but it felt like that alittle bit to me.
And I felt like they sort offocused on some extreme stories
(27:38):
of negative things that hadhappened to some light-skinned
celebrities.
And I think also the fact thatin light girls, most of the
people they interviewed werecelebrities.
And in dark girls, most of thepeople I interviewed were
regular people.
And I mean, that in and ofitself is the the sociological
answer right there about the wayprivilege works around color.
SPEAKER_00 (27:58):
And that's incredibly problematic.
And now that I'm and now thatyou said that, I'm I'm recalling
it now.
And it is a bit problematic.
Well, it's more than a bitproblematic, right?
Let's just name that.
And if you think about, so nowyou insert social media and this
whole popular culture aspectaround that, which is something
that I've been very, veryinterested in as it, and I'm
(28:20):
sure you have been too, as itrelates to how colorism itself
sort of is how it lives, right?
So how colorist messages get outand sort of get replayed a lot
on social media.
I think that really that aspectof it gets out quite a bit.
And you think about just beyondsocial media, music lyrics and
(28:41):
those things, I think get playedout even more.
And I think it would be such afascinating thing to explore
even further.
But they are not the same,right?
It is not the same.
You have to be very, verycareful when you start.
You cannot conflate the two.
They're just not.
They are not the same.
And it's a very it does evenmore damage to the experiences
(29:05):
of darker skinned women.
SPEAKER_01 (29:07):
That's right.
I I agree with you 100%.
I mean, in regard to socialmedia, I mean, there's so much
to say, but one of the things Igot really interested in a few
years ago was the use offilters.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, marketed as sort of beautyfilters, but really just
(29:28):
opportunities to lighten,brighten, whiten one's skin.
There there were so many.
I mean, just thousands uponthousands upon thousands created
in all different apps and alldifferent platforms.
It was really fascinating.
And this kind of like brushingit under the rug as just one
more sort of beauty tool wasreally wild to me.
SPEAKER_00 (29:52):
So, for those folks who may not know, one of your
earlier ideas, specificallywithin the context of colorism,
is that.
That light skin functions as aform of social capital, and that
for women of color, they theyform this notion of a light
skin, sort of forms this idea ofa beauty cue, and that women
(30:14):
fall along the beauty cue, andthat light skin falls at the top
of the beauty cue.
Would you would you mindunpacking those two ideas for
us?
SPEAKER_01 (30:22):
When I first wrote about light skin as social
capital, especially for women, Iwas really trying to argue with
data that being lighter skinnedis like a resource to have on
the dating and marriage market.
And so it functions the way acollege degree functions or
(30:46):
middle class status functions,that it puts you up higher and
makes you more competitive formore elite partners.
And I think that was somethingthat people talked about
casually, kind of colloquially,but there wasn't really much
data for, or at least no one hadreally like looked at it.
And once we started looking atit, it was like, oh wow, you can
(31:09):
actually see this in the surveydata.
Like it was to me, I was blownaway by that.
And from there, I argued aboutthis idea of the beauty cue,
like a cue meaning like a line,that in a patriarchal racist
society like the United States,women's appearance matters
(31:32):
tremendously in their marriageability or date ability, and
their bodies have thisoutweighed importance in their
own status.
And so there's like a cue of themost desirable women, highest
status women by beauty at thetop and lower at the bottom, and
(31:53):
that skin color plays a big rolein this ranking.
So that you might not have acollege degree, but if you have
light skin, that puts you uphigh, right?
And that was the kind ofargument that I was making.
We already can see very clearlya racial aspect to what I would
call a duty cue, where whitewomen are seen as highly
(32:14):
desirable and beautiful andwomen of color less so.
But even among women of color, Ithink there's a cue there that
operates.
And I mean, the evidence for itis all around us, from who was
your homecoming queen at yourschool to who's on the
television, to who's anInstagram baddie.
(32:36):
I mean, all of it is the sameand everybody looks sort of
similar.
And then I would argue with theincreasing investment in
cosmetic procedures and otherkinds of things that our ability
to purchase racial capital hasjust gotten bigger and bigger.
(32:58):
So maybe you weren't at the topof the queue by birth, but hey,
you can get some filler in theright places and do some
procedures and get your nosedone and your eyes and move
yourself right up.
And I'm not saying it, and thisis an important point that I
usually make whenever I'm givinga talk, is like I'm not saying
it in a judgmental way, like,oh, all these people are trying
(33:20):
to do cosmetic procedures.
What I'm saying is these arerational acts in a society that
really values women's bodies incertain kinds of ways.
So why, why wouldn't you try tolighten your skin?
And why wouldn't you maybe takesome even potential big risks in
order to do that?
Why wouldn't you get your nosedone?
Why wouldn't you have your lipsdone, your your eyelids, you
(33:42):
know, et cetera, et cetera?
That these are these aren't actsof vanity, these are acts of
rational upward social mobilityin a society that overvalues
women's bodies.
SPEAKER_00 (33:55):
I'm so glad you brought that up because you know
I was gonna ask you.
That's like my next question.
Because what about, you know,um, you know, we live in a BBL
culture and a plastic surgeryculture from Cardi B to Lotto to
just pick a housewife regardlessof their their location, whether
(34:17):
they're in Potomac or Atlanta orJersey or what have you.
I mean, we and regardless oftheir their their race, right?
Everyone seems to be doing that.
You know, where is the colorism?
If we're sort of thinking aboutpulling out and teasing out the
colorism there, not necessarilythe colorism, but if we're we're
sort of teasing out the aspectsof maybe the the skin tone
(34:41):
pieces or the the the socialcapital, the skin tone is the
social capital, because we don'tnecessarily know if colorism is
there.
Well, listen, we know it'sthere.
We know it's there.
It's always there.
Some ladies on Potomac.
But anyway, if we're to sort ofinsert that into those pieces,
where does where does theconversation lead us then?
SPEAKER_01 (35:01):
Yeah, I I mean I really think that these shows,
these various kinds of shows,various kinds of reality TV
shows in particular, have reallynormalized the manipulation of
the body in capitalism, really.
I mean, it is it is a way ofviewing the body as another
natural resource to be mined andmanipulated for economic gain.
(35:26):
And and again, I'm not castingaspersions on individual people,
like this is a culturalphenomenon as part of the
structure of the way our societyis.
So people are making rationaldecisions within it, but those
decisions also havecomplications and they have
implications for everyone.
So I do feel like one of thethings I'll hear from people
(35:46):
sometimes is like, hey, you knowwhat?
If you got a cream that makesyour skin lighter or makes your
hair straighter, or you want toget your nose done or whatever,
like good for you.
Like, get that bag.
Like, you got to do what yougotta do to survive.
I don't agree with that.
And I'll tell you why.
Because when you do that as anindividual, you are reinforcing
(36:08):
a system that makes it harderfor everybody else.
So, like, okay, celebrity ex, goahead and do all those things.
But that means that all theother people who are dark
skinned, who have big lips, whohave wide noses, the all the
Asian women who have an eye whohave don't have an eyelid fold,
(36:29):
you are reinforcing adevaluation of those bodies.
And so I feel like, yeah, youcan do it and you can benefit
from it, but it isn't withouteffects on everybody else.
And if you're willing to takethat, fine, that's okay.
But I don't think we shoulddelude ourselves into acting
like it doesn't affect anybodyelse.
SPEAKER_00 (36:51):
Especially for younger people, right?
Especially people like me whohave teenagers who are still
trying to like make their way orfigure this all out, who aren't
quite yet there as far as comingof age, who don't really have
that all figured out.
I think that definitely, or justeveryday folks who are still
trying to figure though all ofthose things out.
(37:13):
Gosh, I just, man, I wish we hadmore time.
Time.
Gosh, I think we need a part twoat some point.
I just wish we had more timebecause this is literally my
favorite topic, right?
So I do want to ask you oneother question before we we we
kind of wrap, and that's reallywhat do you think is the most
(37:34):
noticeable thing that'sdifferent about today's college
students?
So, how would you characterizeGen Z?
How are they the most differentcompared to earlier generations?
SPEAKER_01 (37:49):
I feel like people tease me when I say this, but I
love Gen Z.
I just feel like I've been doingsome research and leading a
research team of Gen Zresearchers about their
experiences in college.
So I've been spending a littlebit of time on this, and I just
feel like Gen Z is telling GenX, and that's my generation.
(38:13):
Y'all need to hold on a minute.
And like they're just, I feellike they just really give us a
reality check.
Like, why are you workingyourselves to death?
For what?
And I mean, they're like, wegive them a hard time, like, oh,
Gen Z, like they don't want towork, whatever.
Why I I think what they'resaying to us is, am I working my
fingers to the bone for not thatmuch money in a company I'm not
(38:38):
sure I believe in any way, andgiving up much of my life and my
health for it?
And I think for us in Gen X,like that hurts because it cuts
a little close to the bone.
Like, ooh, Gen Z collegestudents, they don't want to
work for free.
You want them to deal withracial issues at the university
and help be part of thesolution, fine, but you better
(38:58):
pay them.
Pay them.
But I feel like they've reallytouched on things that prior
generations have overlooked ornot thought of or minimized, and
they don't like to put up with alot of emotional mess.
I feel like they'll be like, goto therapy.
Because this is a generation whoare much more familiar with
(39:19):
therapy than like their parents'generation, right?
So I've raised two gents years.
I have a 22-year-old and a19-year-old, so I am well versed
in their criticisms of ourgeneration.
But I really do deeplyappreciate them.
I really do.
And I feel like I learn a lotfrom my students, and I'm
grateful really to beinteracting with them on a
(39:40):
regular basis.
SPEAKER_00 (39:41):
They're like they're old souls, but and they will get
you together now.
They will get you together withit.
Thank you.
Yeah.
I I completely agree with that.
They are not afraid to tell youlike that you need to get it
together.
SPEAKER_01 (39:55):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (39:55):
Yeah.
But you do have to pay them.
I completely agree with that.
Yeah.
I literally just went throughthat a couple weeks ago.
Oh, yeah.
But um, here's my rate.
Like, oh, that oh, okay.
Let me look at my budget.
SPEAKER_01 (40:08):
Let's see what I can do.
I did all kind of free work asan undergrad.
And when I look back, I'm like,why did I do that?
I mean, I just yes, absolutelyfor free.
SPEAKER_00 (40:16):
Okay.
Two, no, three rapid firequestions.
We always end with three rapidfire questions.
Ready?
Something that's made you smilebig this week.
I was saying this week.
It is Monday.
So something that has made yousmile big this month.
We'll say that this month.
SPEAKER_01 (40:31):
My daughter was just home from college over the
weekend visiting, and seeingyour children grow and their
increased sense ofself-awareness and efficacy in
the world will just bring you toyour knees with joy.
SPEAKER_00 (40:46):
Every time I ask that question, every time, the
person responds with family.
Every single time.
Oh, that's good.
At least okay.
Something that keeps you up atnight.
SPEAKER_01 (40:57):
Impending authoritarianism,
anti-immigrant, anti-transagenda.
Yeah, that that is reallykeeping me up at night.
SPEAKER_00 (41:05):
Yeah.
For sure.
And as we look ahead at the nextuh, let's say the next
generation of colorism research.
What questions do you thinkstill demand our attention?
SPEAKER_01 (41:24):
I think there's still a lot to be done around
colorism in the criminal justicesystem.
And I feel like that like stuffaround criminal justice and
sociology in general has reallytaken off over the past like 15
years or so.
So I'm really looking forward toseeing more and more work there.
And then I think the other pieceis gonna be around manipulation
(41:47):
of the body, you know, increaseduse of um cosmetic procedures
and AI.
I think those will be the areas,and obviously people are already
starting that work, and I thinkwe're just gonna see a real
explosion there, and I'm excitedto see what people learn.
SPEAKER_00 (42:01):
Same thing.
SPEAKER_01 (42:02):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (42:03):
Thank you so much to Dr.
Margaret Hunter.
It has always been a pleasure.
And for me, again, just acontinued full circle moment.
I hope we have many, many more.
So I appreciate Zephyr Ann.
Thank you for having me on theshow, really.
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