Study analyzes colorism, relationship to other people, world

Individuals with stereotypical black features are more likely to be sentenced to death for their crimes against a white victim, said Hana Shepard, a professor in the Department of Sociology.

This “colorism” is a type of prejudice that extends further than just individual races and has been the focal point of numerous studies, Shepard said.

Research suggests people are likely to pin black stereotypes on people who have darker skin, so they may be targeted for surveillance or treated differently, she said.

“One study examined the effect of varying then-candidate Obama's skin tone on voting and found that when people didn't know much about him, when he was presented with darker skin, they were less likely to vote for him," Shepard said. "Eighty-seven percent of the sample was white."

There is a lot of evidence on how skin tone can influence peoples' feelings and women in particular, she said. Dark skin tone is linked to lower self-esteem in women and lower self-efficacy in men.

A recent study found that biracial women are more satisfied with their skin tone than other women who identify as black, she said.

Colorism has been around for an extensive period of time, Shepard said. Stories exist about passing the "brown bag test" early in the century, which means a person cannot be too dark.

“There are references to preference by skin tone in literature like Zora Neale Hurston's 1925 ‘Color Struck’ or the 1929 novel ‘The Blacker the Berry’ specifically about being darker skinned and female,” she said.

Shepard noted examples of colorism in today's world as well.

Actress Lupita Nyong'o gave a speech at Essence about people telling her she could never succeed because she was too dark and Oprah Winfrey released a documentary “Light Girls” about the prevalence of the "skin lightener" market around the world, Shepard said. 

Catherine Lee, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology, said colorism is not a new concept. 

“Earlier research had shown that lighter skinned blacks fared better than darker ones in a whole host of areas, like the employment and juvenile justice system,” said Lee, a faculty associate in the center for Race and Ethnicity at Rutgers.

Colorism is part of racism and society values whiteness, she said. She cited past research that showed lighter skinned blacks are treated better at work and in academic settings.

“One could say this then translates to valuing lightness more generally, attaching higher value and worth to folks whose skin color is closer to whiteness,” she said. “This valuing of lighter skin color exists among members of minority groups as well.”

There is a long history of ranking intelligence by color, Lee said. In the past, dark-skinned groups were seen as less intelligent than lighter-skinned groups.

Tom Jacobs, a journalist at Pacific Time magazine, summed up the findings of studies on the topic, according to an article on Vox. 

He found lighter-skinned black men with bachelor's degrees have an advantage in job application processes over those who have MBAs, lighter skinned women in North Carolina received shorter prison sentences than darker peers and African-Americans with more education are remembered as being lighter than they actually are.

This thinking could taint employer's decisions about hiring, promotions, awards, internships and mentorship, according to the article. 

White interviewers deemed lighter-skinned blacks and Hispanics as more intelligent than darker-skinned people, according to a study that was done by professor Lance Hannon, a professor at Villanova University. These people had identical educational achievement, vocabularies and scores on a political test, according to Vox.

“The results provide good reason to believe that what Hannon calls 'white colorism' exists. And they raise concerns about what unfair, complexion-based beliefs about who's smart and who's not can have in every area of American life,” the article explains.

Creating "image makers," like those in advertising, fashion and entertainment, is a path to overcome this preconceived misconception, Shepard said. 

Another way to overcome colorism is to make the skills and talents of darker-skinned groups more widely visible, since they are enormously underrepresented in media, advertising, politics and entertainment, Shepard said. 

“Some scholars try to understand and bring attention to the ‘skin color paradox’ which is that even though they are treated more poorly, dark-skinned black Americans still identify totally with other black Americans,” she said.

Sanandh Ravu, a Rutgers Business School first-year, defines colorism as people assuming an individual is inferior due to their darker skin color, or the opposite of someone with light skin color.

The best way to overcome this would be to encourage diversity in schools, Ravu said. Creating an understanding that such stereotypes are wrong at a young age is much easier than at an older age.

“(Colorism) would definitely affect real life situations because people are always influenced by biases when considering people for a job or for other important decisions,” he said.