Exam 5: Colorism and Skin-Color Stratification

The concept of __________ explains how sexism and racism interact to create an order of women from the lightest to the darkest, where the lightest get the most resources and the darkest get the least.

While scholars of colorism may disagree on the origins of colorism, most would agree that colorism:

Although popular in the early 1900s, skin bleaching products are rarely used today.

Colorism is perpetuated not only by Whites but also within different racial and ethnic groups among people of color.

Skin-bleaching has become common among women throughout Africa.

Findings that darker-skinned immigrants tend to earn lower wages and have poorer health outcomes than their lighter-skinned counterparts is an example of skin-color stratification.

Explain the concept of hypodescent in the United States. Does this idea persist in the contemporary U.S.?

Research has found that employers prefer to hire lighter-skinned African Americans over darker-skinned African Americans. How might these hiring preferences contribute to skin-color stratification in the labor market?

One exception to colorism was slavery: because all enslaved people were considered "Black," skin color did not impact their status.

Korie Edwards, Katrina M. Carter-Tellison, and Cedric Herring's study of marriage among non-Whites in urban areas, found that for ________ , dark-skinned men and women were less likely to marry than their lighter-skinned counterparts.

Compare and contrast how the racial classification systems in Brazil, Latin America, and the United States shape each region's system of skin-color stratification.

Unlike the United States or Latin American countries colonized by Spain, Brazil never had an official racial classification system that defined blackness.

In Brazil, people's perceived race is largely determined by:

The findings from Melville Herskovits' study of Blacks in Harlem in the 1920s mirror the findings of Parameswaran and Cardoza's research in modern day India. Both studies show that men preferred to marry _________ partners.

Whereas _______ relies on the belief that some races are better than others, _______ is the idea that, within races, lighter is better.

The prevalence of skin-whitening creams and skin-lightening practices is a salient reflection of the ways in which colorism operates in countries across the world, suggesting a "global color hierarchy." Select two societies where colorism exists and explain two ways in which it structures social life differently in these two societies.

Asian Americans use skin lighteners in hopes of becoming White.

Research on Asian American, Trinidadian, South African, and Hispanic women who use skin lighteners showed a similarity amongst all groups. This similarity was that:

How did colorism manifest during the era of slavery in the United States? What is the legacy of this colorism?

Give an example of a light-skinned, woman artist of color, and use the "beauty queue" concept to explain her fame.