Colorism
Colorism refers to the use of white skin as a standard, assigning privileges and advantages to lighter skin tones and disadvantages to darker ones. It occurs both within and between racialised and ethnic groups. Colorism is a form of racism, as a person’s value and supposed superiority are defined by their skin colour.
According to Prof. Maisha-Maureen Auma, colorism is a racially shaped politics of the body. It evaluates bodies against an invented, idealised and enforced white norm and places them within a hierarchy. Within this white-centred aesthetic, Black bodies are positioned and perceived daily as deviations from the white norm.
Colorism