Reece 2021 - The Future of American Blackness (original) (raw)

The Unceasing Significance of Colorism: Skin Tone Stratification in the United States

Daedalus, 2021

For many decades now, social scientists have documented immense ethnoracial inequalities in the United States. Much of this work is rooted in comparing the life chances, trajectories, and outcomes of African Americans to White Americans. From health to wealth and nearly every measure of well-being, success, and thriving one can find, White Americans remain ahead of Black Americans. What this focus on ethnoracial inequality between “groups” obscures, however, is long-standing skin tone inequality within groups. In this essay, I trace the trajectory of colorism and skin tone stratification in the United States over the past century. Next, I high-light the contemporary persistence of skin tone stratification, not only among African Americans, but among Latinx and Asian Americans as well. I conclude by arguing that future research on colorism will be essential to understand comprehensively the significance of race/ethnicity in a demographically shifting United States (such as immigratio...

The missing social movement: colorism in black America

Interface: a journal for and about social movements , 2021

As social movements have been sparked across the United States over recent years to bring attention to and combat various forms of racial inequality, from police violence to mass incarceration to economics, one issue has been conspicuously absent as a target: colorism. Among black Americans colorism is almost ubiquitous, creating vast skin tone disparities. Recent studies reveal that darker skinned black Americans are considerably more likely to experience violence at the hands of law enforcement, receive longer criminal convictions for the same crimes, and suffer an economic penalty of thousands of dollars relative to their lighter skinned counterparts, among a wide variety of other social and economic inequities. In some cases, the gap between the social and economic outcomes of light skinned black Americans and darkskinned black Americans are as large as the gap between white Americans and black Americans. This leaves an important outstanding question: why, then, have racial social movements in the United States consistently neglected not just to center a discussion of color but to even emphasize it as an important factor shaping the lives of black Americans? This manuscript will answer this question by using theories of durable inequality and path dependence to explore the history of color in the United States to explain how skin color stratification became cemented among black Americans and how it became so taken-for-granted that it has neglected to attract significant social movement attention. I argue that the crux of the issue builds from the United States' historical infatuation with fixed and immovable racial categories as the country sought to institute Jim Crow segregation laws in the wake of Emancipation and Reconstruction. This led black Americans to counter with calls for black collectivism that decentered the importance of color in favor of presenting a unified front to combat segregation. This "black is black" orientation remains dominant among black and white Americans leading both to ignore vast intraracial color disparities in favor of a focus on race that fails to adequately address the needs of the most vulnerable: dark skinned black Americans.

The Skin Color Paradox and the American Racial Order

Social Forces, 2007

Dark-skinned blacks in the United States have lower socioeconomic status, more punitive relationships with the criminal justice system, diminished prestige, and less likelihood of holding elective office compared with their lighter counterparts. This phenomenon of "colorism" both occurs within the African American community and is expressed by outsiders, and most blacks are aware of it. Nevertheless, blacks' perceptions of discrimination, belief that their fates are linked, or attachment to their race almost never vary by skin color. We identify this disparity between treatment and political attitudes as "the skin color paradox, " and use it as a window into the politics of race in the United States over the past half-century.

Color Crit: Critical Race Theory and the History and Future of Colorism in the US

Critical race theory teaches that racism and racial inequality are constants in American society that stand outside of the prejudices of individuals. It argues that structures and institutions are primarily responsible for the maintenance of racial inequality. However, critical race theorists have neglected to formally examine and theorize colorism, a primary offshoot of racial domination. Although studies of colorism have become increasingly common, they lack a unifying theoretical framework, opting to lean on ideas about prejudice and preference to explain the advantages lighter skinned, Black Americans are afforded relative to darker skinned Black Americans. In this study, I deploy a critical race framework to push back against preference as the only, or primary, mechanism facilitating skin tone stratification. Instead, I use historical Census data and regression analysis to explore the historical role of color-based marriage selection on concentrating economic advantage among lighter skinned Black Americans. I then discuss the policy and legal implications of developing a structural view of colorism and skin tone stratification in the United States and the broader implications for how we conceptualize race in this country.

Highlighting the chameleon nature of power: The social practice and ideological effects of the label “African-American”

Journal of Language and Politics, 2003

This essay uses a poststructural/critical race analysis, and provides a specific example of how the social practice of labeling serves to create major ideological effects, which produce and reproduce unequal race-based power relations. Certain U. S. citizens are ascribed/branded with the seemingly politically correct label, "African-American". Many believe that the shift from "Black" to "African-American" in 1988 was the result of Blacks exercising political power and achieving a hard-won right to change their identity. Also many view the new label as the common sense preferred alternative to "Black". This article deconstructs the term "African-American" and views it within the context of the macro and micro interactive forces of politics, economics, sociology, history and socio-cultural phenomena. Instead of the intended purpose of fostering a sense of self-esteem, the label has also served to reinforce the socially constructed binary dualisms characterizing "Blacks" as being fundamentally different from "Whites". Moreover, the notion of Black pride, self-esteem and heritage are concepts with the power to shift culpability and blame onto the victims of a race-based system. Power appeared to have been exercised by Black/African-Americans. However, the shift to African-American was not the result of autonomous thinking. It was a "reflex without reflection" (Billig 1991:8). It "echoed" dominating ideological structures of power. The "new" label unwittingly serves to further perpetuate racist ideology inherited from a foundational institution of slavery. America can enjoy the image of having a culture of freedom, equality and egalitarianism, while maintaining justifiable race-based political, social and economic inequality gaps.

Negotiating the Boundaries of American Blackness

Exploring the Social and Academic Experiences of International Students in Higher Education Institutions

African students in the United States are assigned a racial identity ‘Black' in accordance with racial stratifications of the U.S. society. This designation makes it necessary for them to negotiate the structural constructions of American Blackness. Guided by social constructivism, the author explored African students' negotiation of Black racial solidarity. African students' racial solidarity was embedded within shared perspectives of common fate, which provided a reference for collective Black identity but; however, did not culminate into strong racial in-group loyalty. African students' racial solidarity was mitigated by the desire to exonerate themselves from inherent Black stereotypes. This was exacerbated by their non-prototypic cultural characteristics, which, according to native-born counterparts, rendered them ‘illegitimate' in-group members. The increasing presence of foreign-born Black students unveils both commonalities and heterogeneity among Black s...

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE: Continuity and Change in the American Racial Landscape

Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 2006

Within the last eighteen months we have seen both the Katrina disaster and the Obama candidacy for the Democratic Party's nomination for president reshape the political landscape within the United States. Equally important, for our analytical purposes, both phenomena are strong indicators of the evolving nature of the American racial order. The Obama candidacy points to important changes in the racial terrain within the United States. His candidacy highlights the more tolerant nature of public racial discourse in the United States-it was not very long ago when a Black candidate for president was considered unelectable. Obama's candidacy also highlights how immigration from non-European countries has fundamentally reshaped the racial landscape. Obama is, of course, not the "traditional" Black candidate, as his African heritage is due to recent immigration, not the slave trade. Relatedly, his candidacy also highlights the evolving nature of, and contestation over, racial categories. Over the past decade we have seen similar processes transforming conceptualizations0categories such as Hispanic, Latino/a, and Asian American. With even more recent waves of immigration from Africa and the African diaspora, we are now seeing the category Black under heavy contestation-which was brought to thẽ White! public eye as a result of the furor over whether Obama is "Black" enough to garner African American support and whether~as Senator Joseph Biden implied! part of Obama's crossover appeal is the perceived absence of a "tainted" African American cultural heritage. The Obama candidacy is emblematic of one type of change that marks the American racial landscape. The Katrina disaster, on the other hand, to which we dedicated our entire last issue, was more indicative of continuities in the American racial order. As many of the articles in that issue detailed, the aftermath of Katrina highlighted how the intersection of race, class, and gender continues to place African Americans in a subordinate position within the American racial hierarchy, leaving them not only

American Racialization: An Ecosystem and Non-Phenomenon

American Racialization: An Ecosystem and Non-Phenomenon Ivan Nikolic, PhD. 2023, 2023

This article delves into the complexities of racialization in the United States, presenting it as a deeply entrenched ecosystem rather than a mere phenomenon. Contrary to the simplistic understanding of racism as prejudice based on skin color, this analysis reveals racialization as a systemic issue, perpetuated by historical legacies, sociocultural conditioning, and institutional practices. Through a critical examination of various sociological theories and historical instances, it is argued herein that racism is a socially constructed mechanism, taught and internalized through processes that label non-whiteness as deviant and inferior. By exploring the roles of education, media, and social policy in reinforcing racial taxonomies, this article highlights how racial disparities are institutionalized and internalized, contributing to a complex network of racial advantages and disadvantages. Drawing from Bonilla-Silva's framework on "racialized social systems" and incorporating insights from Carmichael and Hamilton on institutional racism, as well as discussions on cultural racism and the psychological impact of racial discrimination, the article presents a multifaceted view of racialization. This approach underscores the necessity of addressing both the overt and covert aspects of racism, advocating for comprehensive interventions aimed at dismantling its foundational structures. Through this exploration, the article illuminates the intricate dynamics of racialization as an ecosystem, emphasizing the critical need for a holistic understanding and approach to effectively combat racial inequalities.

The persistent problem of colorism: Skin tone, status, and inequality

Sociology Compass, 2007

Colorism is a persistent problem for people of color in the USA. Colorism, or skin color stratification, is a process that privileges light-skinned people of color over dark in areas such as income, education, housing, and the marriage market. This essay describes the experiences of African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans with regard to skin color. Research demonstrates that light-skinned people have clear advantages in these areas, even when controlling for other background variables. However, dark-skinned people of color are typically regarded as more ethnically authentic or legitimate than light-skinned people. Colorism is directly related to the larger system of racism in the USA and around the world. The color complex is also exported around the globe, in part through US media images, and helps to sustain the multibillion-dollar skin bleaching and cosmetic surgery industries.