Black America used to be, and perhaps still is, a pigmentocracy, which means that the social hierarchy is based largely on colorism. When I was growing up, Louisiana was ruled by pigmentocracy. I know there are other black communities where colorism has dictated who socializes with whom, what organizations and churches one can belong to, and even where one goes to college, but I suspect that Louisiana is the pinnacle of color consciousness.

Old church ladies or well-meaning elders compliment the light-skinned kids with good hair or colored eyes, but those niceties stopped with the dark-complexioned ones. This type of preferential colorism isn’t only found in the church aisles, it’s at family gatherings, on the dating scene, in the classroom, on the playground—it’s everywhere.

Colorism from your own people feels worse than racism – at the very least your own family and people should welcome you, no?

It’s now common to hear East Asian and South Asian Americans declare that fixing the anti-Black racism in their communities is a precondition for taking part in Black Lives Matter. Eliminating racism and colorism is, of course, a worthy pursuit, but it’s also impossible to do in the abstract.

Like those, James’s season still gave noticeably less screen time to its Black contestants—and because of James’s Blackness, the colorism that has always plagued The Bachelor became more visible. Darker-skinned and/or monoracial-presenting Black women were sent home earlier; none even made it to the hometown dating rounds.

Turner's colorism with its cosmic world view had nothing to do with realism, in spite of its impasto handling of colour. […] Turner's images are based on the far-sighted and purely objective views of the 18th century which he imbued with new meaning through his colorism based on colour theory and plein-air painting.

Colorism

Meaning

Noun

Origin

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