I have enjoyed my research into colorism.  Just as we were discussing in class how people with black names got fewer interviews than white people, the same thing happens with race.  People of varying shades of color are definitely discriminated against based on color versus their capability to do the job.  Although it is wrong, it still happens.  People have not fully moved past racism from so many years ago.  These articles proved that.

I have been finding some good articles regarding colorism.  It still amazes me how much discrimination there is even in our generation.  You would think that there would be more equality these days.  There aren't a huge number of websites with studies, so I may widen my search to include colorism in the workplace in addition to job selection.  I look forward to seeing what other articles and information is out there.

I have found some interesting articles about colorism and how it relates to job selection, self-confidence due to discrimination, and other aspects of life. I find it interesting upon first looks that everyone who writes articles and does studies seems to be quite against colorism and wants it to end.  If so many people don't agree with it, it shouldn't be so prevalent in our society still today.   I think I may be surprised at just how many people are discriminated against just because of their skin color.

For my project, I will be looking further at articles regarding colorism.  I will be investigating colorism as it relates to job selection and other relations. Other people have done intense studies on this topic, so I will be reading those and analyzing them. This is a very interesting topic and look forward to further my investigation.

                               

http://www.theroot.com/buzz/olympian-ignored-because-colorism


This article talks about the fame discrepancy between two Olympic athletes.  Lolo Jones (left) has lighter skin than Dawn Harper (right). Obviously.  But what isn't as obvious is why Jones seems to be getting more love and publicity.  Publicity people think that Jones is more beautiful than Harper.  Why? It seems to be because her skin is lighter.  Harper is also lacking in endorsements. It seems that companies think that people will want to look at Jones on ads and billboards more than Harper.  I think this is ridiculous.  It should only matter who is the better athlete that decides how much publicity she gets.  If Jones is in fact a better athlete than Harper, then fine.  But I don't think this is the case.  Harper is being discriminated against.  Also in the article, it mentions that a credential for a commercial is "friendly, but not too dark".  Companies think we think that dark skinned people are not to be trusted and therefore shouldn't be in commercials.  In today's society, you would think that people could look past skin color and try to treat everyone equally.  Wouldn't that be nice.

This article I found is quite interesting. It is about a woman in Virginia who is fighting colorism, but not without controversy.  In her church and workshops, she uses the paper bag test (as described in previous post).  She gauges people by their color and give lighter skinned people rewards, while shoving the darker skinned people to the back of the class.  She herself is dark skinned.  People obviously think this is wrong, which it is, but she is just highlighting what is going on all around us.  She used it as an example of how people treat others.  Everyone seems to do their own "paper bag test".  She is just making obvious what people do, and trying to make people aware of colorism in our society.  I think it is an interesting idea.

http://wtvr.com/2012/12/10/richmond-woman-fights-colorism-within-african-american-community/

http://www.bet.com/news/national/2011/05/31/the-stupidity-of-black-colorism-.html


This article is an opinion piece about colorism in response to a documentary about dark skinned women called "Dark Girls".  It talks about how even though blacks are still looked down upon by some whites, they are even now being figuratively segregated by other races and cultures.  As I talked about in a previous blog,  Beyonce is a lighter dark skinned person, and sometimes they lighten her more, and some people don't appreciate that.  They think that people view her as what all dark skinned people should look like, which obviously is not the case.  In the documentary, it shows girls who want to bleach their skin so they can look lighter and "beautiful".  That is really tragic to think that people will go to such poisonous lengths to look like how they think society wants them to look.  Even though this article is biased, the point is true enough.  It is ridiculous for minorities to be racist themselves, when they don't like being looked down upon because of their race.  In order to have worldwide respect and peace, everyone needs to move on and not care about a color.  It's just a color.

This is a promo video for a longer documentary about colorism.  Although I did not watch it, I think this video gives a good idea of what exactly colorism is and how far and deep it runs.  I did not know that it went back to slave days.  The slave owners would favor lighter slaves and give them more privileges than darker slaves.  They thought they were more white, so close enough to be nicer to them.  This ridiculous idea has lasted all these years into today.  I suppose if you backtrack to the slave days, directly after they were liberated, people still judged them and thought that the lighter newly non-slave people looked more like them, the might have figured they had more of a chance becoming more like regular white citizens versus the really dark people.  This theory had then been passed down generation to generation all the way into today.  Dark people are more easily associated with gangs and general criminals, while lighter people, even like Soledad O'Brien in this video, are more easily recognized as close-to-white-non-gang-like people.  Hopefully someday this can change, but for now, lighter is still better.  

   
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These two pictures really speak to colorism. The first picture is of Beyonce.  The picture on the left is about how she really looks, and the picture on the right is a publicity shot.  The magazine shot is obviously a lot lighter.  Along with touching up photos of celebrities and making them look younger, they also sometimes lighten them.  I don't really see the purpose of this, only because they think that society wants to see lighter dark skinned people.  On the other hand, the second picture of OJ Simpson taken at the time of his trial.  For his picture, they darkened his skin. This was a huge controversy at the time. This goes with what I have been reading about.  Light is good. Darker is worse. So they darkened his skin.  They wanted to make him look darker and meaner and more of a monster.  They thought that darker dark skinned people are worse than lighter people.  He didn't pass the brown paper bag test, that's for sure.  I think that was the deal. Either way, lightening or darkening skin for publicity is ridiculous.

As I was reading through articles trying to find one for this blog, I came across a few sentences talking about a "brown paper bag test".  I wondered what that was about, and ended up finding an interesting article about it.  This article asks how would we feel if we could only associate with people who were the same color or lighter than a brown paper bag.  This idea was used dating back to the slave days and soon after they were freed.  People gradually were accepting black slaves as people, but only light dark-skinned people.  They would judge people and only accept people if they were dark, but light enough.  Many people think this judging idea still exists today.

This seems to sound ridiculous to non-judgmental people like us, but it's a big deal to some.   For blacks in the early 1900s, as if being of a different race and culture wasn't difficult enough, if they were a few shades darker than what was "acceptable" they would still be shunned, by people of the opposite race and of their own. There are all sorts of statistics of how darker black people are not as successful as lighter black people because some people still don't find it as "appealing".  To be so specific and to compare them to a brown bag really shocked me. I can't imagine looking at someone and thinking "oh, you're a tad too dark for me to talk to you".  That's just ridiculous.


http://www.thehilltoponline.com/news/the-legacy-of-the-brown-paper-bag-1.466574#.UQrdKR1baSo

When Mrs. Wren was talking about colorism, I thought it sounded interesting.  I had never heard of it and find it kind of odd that there would be racism within racism.  I want to learn more about it and see what this is all about!