Discrimination Based On Skin Color
Colorism refers to a form of prejudice or discrimination in which human beings are treated differently based on the social meanings attached to skin color.
Coined by Alice Walker in 1982, colorism, although often overshadowed by racism, is not the same as racism. Multiple factors are used to indicate race (e.g. skin color or ancestry); therefore, racial categorization does not solely rely on skin color. Skin color is only one mechanism used to assign individuals to a racial category, but race is the set of beliefs and assumptions assigned to that category. With racism, it is the social meaning attached to an individuals race that determines social status. With colorism it is the social meaning attached to an individuals skin color that determines social status. In order for a form of discrimination to be considered colorism, differential treatment must not result from racial categorization, but from the social values associated with skin color.
Colorism can be found across the world, specifically in the United States, Latin America, Asia, the Arab World and Africa. The abundance of colorism is a result of the global prevalence of “pigmentocracy,” a term recently adopted by social scientists to describe societies in which wealth and social status are determined by skin color. Throughout the numerous pigmentocracies across the world, each are characteristic of a society in which the lightest-skinned peoples have the highest social status, followed by the brown-skinned, and finally the black-skinned who are at the bottom of the social hierarchy. This form of prejudice often results in reduced opportunities for those who are discriminated against on the basis of skin color.
Read more about Discrimination Based On Skin Color: In The United States, In Latin America, In South Asia, In East Asia, In The Arab World
Famous quotes containing the words based, skin and/or color:
“The fetish of the great university, of expensive colleges for young women, is too often simply a fetish. It is not based on a genuine desire for learning. Education today need not be sought at any great distance. It is largely compounded of two things, of a certain snobbishness on the part of parents, and of escape from home on the part of youth. And to those who must earn quickly it is often sheer waste of time. Very few colleges prepare their students for any special work.”
—Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958)
“The intellect,—that is miraculous! Who has it, has the talisman: his skin and bones, though they were of the color of night, are transparent, and the everlasting stars shine through, with attractive beams.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Since the quarrel
Will bear no color for the thing he is,
Fashion it thus: that what he is, augmented,
Would run to these and these extremities.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)