Colorism is prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group. Definition from Oxford Languages.
Colorism is not exclusive to the United States, it is practiced all over the world and is possibly more prevalent in the global south. However, in this blog post we will be talking about how colorism affects western media.
Colorism is the result of white supremacy. Those closer to whiteness are seen as more attractive. An example of this would be the 2015 movie Straight Outta Compton.
In search of women to be extras in the film, the company classified prospective candidates from A to D: A girls included Black, white and mixed race; B girls were light-skinned; C girls had light to medium skin tones; and D girls were African American, poor and with medium-to-dark skin tone.
The African American community is heavily affected by colorism. This goes back to slavery. However, I will not discuss that too much in this post. If you look at Netflix's movies that have black characters you will often see the women be much lighter than their male counterparts. Black women have been quite vocal about their erasure on social media and have been creating a conversation about this.
Another example would be Zoe Saldana playing Nina Simone in the 2016 biopic. Nina Simone was a dark skinned woman who was heavily marginalized. Having a light skin women play her would ignore Simone's identity was an unapologetic Black women.
Colorism doesn't just affect women it affects men too. However, in western media dark skin is often seen as masculine, thus you will see a lot of dark skin Black men.
Colorism is an important topic to discuss. It might seem a little depressing to darker skinned people but our culture is changing and more people are talking about this than ever.
