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Virginia Sumner
Eng 120
Megan Malcom-Morgan
4/25/2016
Journey Through the Color Complex

There is an existing beauty standard that revolves around skin complexion

among African Americans and other people of color. This issue has plagued the
African-American community since the days of slavery and continues to hold true in
today's society. Although it is well known by everyone that American society has a
difficult history involving race relations, an equally important matter has not been
given significant attention. This problem is most commonly referred to as colorism
or the color complex. Hidden among racial tensions the problem of colorism has
been wearing away at cultural identity, inclusion, mobility, and social acceptance in
the U.S and many other places for decades. The term colorism was coined by Alice
Walker in 1982 and is the principle that those with lighter, fairer skin are treated
with a higher regard than those with darker skin, and it happens both between
racial communities and within them. It is a form of prejudice and in today's society
that is disadvantaging dark-skinned people, giving privilege to those with a lighter
skin color as well as excluding them from the black community.
In the United States, colorism has roots in slavery and is maintained by a
society of white supremacy (Hunter). This whole concept is built on the notion that a
dark complexion represents savagery, ugliness, and inferiority (Hunter) while on
the opposite side a fair complexion or whiteness represents civility, beauty and
superiority (Hunter). Slave-owners typically gave preferential treatment to slaves
with fairer complexions, especially those slaves that were mulatto or mixed with

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European blood. This happened through miscegenation, the mixing of different
racial groups, which resulted in a large number of mixed race individuals with both
African and European ancestry. A partial white heritage also gave light-skinned
blacks more economic value and caused them to be viewed as smarter and superior
to dark-skinned blacks, allowing more advantages in a white-dominated society,
such as broader opportunities for education, the acquisition of land, property and
less physically grueling work. While dark-skinned slaves toiled outdoors in the
fields, their light-skinned counterparts usually worked indoors completing easier
domestic tasks inside. Having fairer skinned blacks in the house was also
aesthetically pleasing or prettier. Over time this separating of complexion led to the
color hierarchy where light-skinned African Americans are considered more
palatable in a white dominated society. (Williams) There was also a small and rare
amount of freedmen during slavery that were disproportionally light-skinned. After
slavery ended in the U.S., colorism didnt disappear. In black America, those with
light-skin received employment opportunities off limits to darker-skinned African
Americans. This is why upper-class families in black society were largely lightskinned. Soon, light skin and privilege were considered synonymous in the same in
the black community, with light skin being the sole criterion for acceptance into the
black aristocracy. Wealthier black Americans would perform the brown paper bag
test where The paper bag would be held against your skin. And if you were darker
than the paper bag, you werent admitted, (Golden).
Today, mass media is an extremely pervasive source in our society, which can
consume our everyday lives. It is arguably the most powerful source of information
in this day-in-age, the control our society with notions of good versus bad and
desirable versus undesirable. These types of discourses are particularly evident and

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distressing in modern medias deep-seated racial bias in its portrayal of African
American women. More specifically, the obvious Eurocentric ideals in most of
popular media render only African American women who have been constructed to
fit these ideals as beautiful, causing an entire group of African American women to
be deemed invisible, unacceptable, and unworthy of the medias attention. This
pattern of colorism and racial bias emerges constantly and is most obvious in
various forms of social media, like Instagram and Twitter. The colorism that is
ingrained in todays Euro-centric beauty standards is known to emphasize skin color
and hair types that exclude black women, particularly those with darker skin.
Comments like, "you're pretty for a dark girl" are everywhere in the world of darkskinned women because being of a darker complexion I supposed to represent
ugliness. Meanwhile, phrases like "you think you're too good" or "she thinks she's all
that" are a common occurrence for black women with a lighter complexion. The use
of hashtags like team light skin and team dark skin has done nothing but put
Black women with a fairer complexion on a pedestal for being aesthetically pleasing
or pretty because they have loose curly hair, and more European features while
dark women have come to be seen as ugly for having kinky hair and African
features. The Euro-centric standards of beauty are also seen by the sale of hair
relaxers and skin lightening/ bleaching kits. These euro-centric beauty ideal also
have a negative effect on black women with lighter skin. Even though having lighter
skin is seen as more acceptable in mainstream society, in the black community
light-skinned blacks are seen as not being black enough. This puts those with a
lighter skin tone directly between social groups that will not ever be completely
accepting. In addition, there has been a stereotype surrounding, light-skinned black
women as being vapid, pretty, and narcissistic.

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Colorism has an impact on men as well as women but the long-lasting effects
of men are rarely talked about. The concept is most obvious in women and
demonstrated by high sales of hair relaxers and skin bleaching creams. In reality
men are not only participants in the devaluing of black beauty but are also victims
to colorism. Rather than teaching a generation of boys to hate their natural hair
they're being taught that its "cool" to emasculate one another based on skin color.
This leads to the idea that masculinity varies based on your complexion. Men with
lighter skin are seen in today's society as soft, yellow, overly-sensitive, and
feminine, a pretty boy, arrogant, entitled and narcissistic. On the other side of the
coin, men with a darker hue are seen as strong, ready, rugged and masculine. It is
obvious that black women go through far more complex issues of beauty, we too
often decide that women are the only ones who endure this which cannot be farther
from the truth. Men just choose to deal with it in a much more aggressive way. Black
women are unique in that they are asked not only to strive to attain mainstream
standards of beauty, but to have these standards completely override the way they
are naturally (Thompson 854). Media message emphasize an incredibly rigid set of
ideals that are so pervasive it is virtually impossible for women to avoid them.
The issue of colorism has touched the lives of dark, brown, and light skinned
women and has no regard for gender in this white dominated society that we live in.
Even though the standards for Eurocentric beauty were set decades ago by slavery
and colonialism, they are still ever present in todays culture and society. The only
way we can start to overcome this problem is to start lifting up men and women of
all shades within the black American community and in the white American
community. All shades deserve to be treated with respect, and to be loved in
mainstream society. The change has to come from within before it can be without.

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Works Cited
Mathews, Tayler J., and Glenn S. Johnson. "SKIN COMPLEXION IN THE TWENTY-FIRST
CENTURY: THE IMPACT OF COLORISM ON AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN." Race,
Gender & Class 22.1 (2015): 248-74. ProQuest. 25 Apr. 2016.
Thompson, Cheryl. Black Women, Beauty, and Hair as a Matter of Being. Womens
Studies 38.8 (2009): 831-856. Womens Studies International. Web. 11 Apr. 2012.
Williams, Armstrong. "Colorism: Fighting Distinctions between Dark and Fair Skin."
Afro - American Red StarFeb 02 2002. ProQuest. Web. 27 Apr. 2016.
Kendrick, Adrian. "COLORISM." Recorder: A1. Apr 12 2013. ProQuest. Web. 27 Apr.
2016.

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Golden, Marita. Don't Play in the Sun: One Woman's Journey through the Color
Complex. New York: Doubleday, 2004. Print.
Hunter, Margret. The Persistent Problem of Colorism: Skin Tone, Status, and
Inequality. Blackwell Publishing, 2007. Web. 4 Apr. 2016