# data[].attributes.body
Physical traits, mental capabilities, and other qualities contributed to price differentials as well. Crippled and chronically ill slaves sold for a steep discount. Slaves who proved troublesome--runaways, thieves, layabouts, drunks, slow learners, and the like--also sold for lower prices. Taller slaves cost more, perhaps because height indicates nutritional status. In New Orleans, light-skinned females (who were more popular as concubines) sold for a 5 percent premium."
(Paul Finkelman and Joseph Calder Miller, 1998)

For the white male, having a lighter toned slave indicated the owner had money, and a high status quo. Lighter toned slaves cost more at slaves biddings, and were seen as more desirable, and domesticated friendly.

# data[].attributes.body
“If you’re White, you’re right, / If you’re yellow, you’re mellow, / If you’re brown, stick around, / If you’re Black, get back” (Hall, J. C. (2017). )

# data[].attributes.body
The Europeans have made it a point to place Blacks at the bottom of the list. Colonialism was the way for the European nation. Europeans would invade other countries and claim civilians as property. Deeming civilians of stolen land as Slaves to help with the labor, and building what we know now as the United States of America.

Map of the major route made by Europeans during the Slave trade. The map also shows what major resources were prominent for each route.

# data[].attributes.body
The Slave Trade shaped what racism was and still is. For centuries the Europeans. stripped slaves of there religions, cultural traditions, language, land, and self identity. Most of the slaves were from Africa and brought to America on disease infested boats
Since the colonial ages, Africans have faced mistreatment, torture,  rape, cruel labor, and genocide, by White Europeans.

# data[].attributes.body
After the Europeans arrived to the states, race mixing was an issue that began to arise. White indentured Slaves began reproducing children with African Slaves.
In some colonies when a white indentured slave had relations with a black slave it was seen as a crime, and if a child was born that child would be punished with a life sentence of slavery.

White Masters also fornicated and reproduced with Slave women. There was no punishment for the White masters, but the child was considered a slave. If the child was fair toned enough, then they would sometimes get better labor positions, and what some would consider to be better circumstances.

# data[].attributes.body
The main cause of this war was the difference in opinion on slavery. The Union (North) wanted to end slavery and the Confederacy(South) was still dependent on free labor.

The Union won the Civil War but was slavery over???

# data[].attributes.headline
A New Kind of Slavery: Jim Crow and Segregation

# data[].attributes.subject
A New Kind of Slavery: Jim Crow and Segregation

# data[].attributes.body
After the South was defeated by the North in the Civil War, color became a huge factor into laws. Color was used for economic gain, political gain, resulting in Social dominance.

Laws were implemented to keep the African American society stagnant, while being the face of criminality.

# data[].attributes.body
In the 1920's Melville Herskovits conducted a study on the Black community in Harlem.
Results for the Black Elite Class:
9% dark skin
28.9% light Skin
Half of the persons studied resulted in a clear preference for lighter wives.
(Golash-Boza, T. M. (2018).

Delicate: Term most used to describe a lighter toned slave
(Audrey Elisa Kerr. (2005).

# data[].attributes.body
Jim Crow in the South [Image]. (1999).

# data[].attributes.body
Media has played a major role in shaping what beauty is. Blacks were highly discriminated against in Hollywood. Film makers gave major roles to whites or lighter toned individuals, causing darker toned individuals to feel like outcaste.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Colorism in Hollywood: Beauty is "Restricted to One Shade" | Dark Girls | Oprah Winfrey Network

# data[].attributes.body
Due to laws and different treatment slaves and freedmen felt the effects of color discrimination. Lighter toned always being favored and holding more value over the darker toned complexion caused a riff within the Black communities.

# data[].attributes.body
Self hatred
interracial Racism/ Colorism
Identity disorders
intellectual stagnation
Skin Bleaching
Racial Competetion

# data[].attributes.body
Phrase used to describe interracial relations.

# data[].attributes.body
Media has been used to misrepresent race, and gender in what is known as controlling imagery. When something is constantly being portrayed as inferior or criminal, then society begins to perceive that notion as true.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Dark-Skinned Girls On Colourism | Sister

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Light Girls: How to Begin the Healing Process | Light Girls | Oprah Winfrey Network

# data[].attributes.body
Light or Dark, we are all beautiful. Allowing negative stereotypes to keep circulating in the black community is causing division. A fight to the top, as if Black and Brown people don't have enough to fight for already. Skin tone shouldn't be a deciding factor for achievement.

A group only stays oppressed if they continue to feel oppressed!!!

# data[].attributes.body
Colorism is interracial racism. Colorism is based of of skin complexion, rather than race itself.
The feeling that a lighter complexion holds more value than darker complexions.

The feeling as a Light skin person, not knowing where they fit in society due to constant light skin privilege stereotypes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
After two nonprofits delivered 23,000 signatures to Amazon asking it to remove skin-bleaching products with high levels of mercury, the company listened.

An advertisement for Nadinola bleaching cream, "for lovelier lighter skin," in New York in 1944. Credit... Fred Stein Archive, via Getty Images

That weight can be so immense that it pushes some people to take radical steps to change their complexions.

"People don't feel happy about their skin color," said Amira Adawe, the founder of the nonprofit The Beautywell Project, who for the last eight years has been working to root out biases against dark-skinned people and lift the self-esteem of those who have internalized the discrimination.

Her efforts to confront the extreme and unhealthy methods that people turn to for lighter skin brought her to the Amazon offices in Shakopee, Minn., where she hand-delivered a petition with 23,000 signatures in late November.

The petition asked Amazon to remove skin-bleaching products high in mercury from its online platform. The items - which violated the site's guidelines - were pulled a week after the delivery.

While Amazon still offers skin-lightening creams without mercury, the move was a victory in Ms. Adawe's fight against a mentality that has persisted in communities for generations.

"A large retail company selling skin-lightening products sends the message to people that they should change their skin color," Ms. Adawe, said, adding, "We are dealing with years and years of trauma that these people are living with."

That trauma is caused by colorism - prejudice that favors people with lighter skin over those with darker skin, especially within a racial or ethnic group. The term was coined by Alice Walker in 1982.

Colorism has serious mental and emotional effects that can be passed on through generations. It is not the same as racism, but the two are inherently connected.

"It is not just that people within the same race are treating each other differently based on their skin color," said Ellis Monk, an assistant professor of sociology at Harvard who researches colorism. "It is that people in other racial groups are treating people differently based on their skin color."

In the Americas, the importance of a person's skin tone originated in slavery, Professor Monk said. Black people with lighter skin received more privileges from white people, and were thought to be more aesthetically appealing and intellectually superior compared with darker-skinned black people.

As the years passed, these ideas persisted. "Having lighter skin is associated with higher earnings, more education, and sometimes better physical health," Professor Monk said.

One 2017 study found that people with darker skin are more prone to arrests, and struggle more in the marriage market. Another study, from 2015, noted that colorism is often gendered. "Because of its unique relationship to who and what is beautiful, it has a tendency, although not exclusively, to affect and infect women more than men," the study said.

In an effort to avoid the perceived pitfalls that come with being darker, people around the world - in Asia, Africa and the Americas - bleach their skin, sometimes by coating it in toxic chemicals that are usually illegal but still widely available.

Skin-bleaching products, like high-dose hydroquinone, creams high in mercury and steroids, are usually mixed and applied to the skin, Ms. Adawe said.

"The person becomes discolored; they get skin conditions over time," Ms. Adawe said. "They are not even happy with the result, but there is that notion that they want to be white."

People who use hydroquinone and creams that are high in mercury "tend to become very red," Ms. Adawe said. "Some of the women say that it's hard for them to be in the kitchen and cook because of the heat. Their skin becomes very sensitive."

Dermatologists widely prescribe hydroquinone for patients dealing with scars, hyper-pigmentation and melasma, a condition that causes irregular brown patches on the skin, according to Dr. Michele S. Green, a New York-based dermatologist at Lenox Hill Hospital who has been practicing for 25 years.

"Bleaching creams are really efficient and really useful, and I prescribe them all the time," Dr. Green said. But, she said, some people misuse them.

"They should go under a doctor's care," she said, adding, "Not everyone can afford to go to a doctor, and that is the problem."

Image

Amira Adawe, right, of the Beautywell Project and Mary Blitzer, of the Sierra Club, delivered their petition with over 23,000 signatures to the Amazon fulfillment center in Shakopee, Minn., last month. Credit... Christine T. Nguyen/Minnesota Public Radio, via Associated Press

Dr. Green said that she gets many patients looking for skin-lightening injections and other treatments. "Generally speaking, I don't treat those patients," she said. "That is a psychological issue and I'm not going to treat someone, for that it is a dangerous slope."

Some who want to lighten their skin turn to whatever is available on the internet. The Beautywell Project partnered with the Sierra Club's Gender, Equity & Environment Program to make sure that the harmful products that people find online are not readily available.

Last year, the organizations asked Amazon in a letter to stop selling skin-lightening creams that contain high levels of mercury. It was ignored, Ms. Adawe said. This year's campaign was more successful.

An Amazon spokeswoman confirmed in an email last week that the products were no longer available.

"All marketplace sellers must follow our selling guidelines and those who don't will be subject to action, including potential removal of their account," she said. Among other requirements, the marketplace guidelines do not allow skin creams containing mercury.

The move was a major accomplishment for Ms. Adawe and her nonprofit group. After years of research, she believes that places that have experienced colonization and widespread racism are susceptible to exhibiting colorism.

Ms. Adawe hosts a one-hour radio show several times a week during which women call in and anonymously share why they lighten their skin.

"Some women have shared with me that they don't feel like they are attractive enough to men," Ms. Adawe said.

"There have been some communities that told me that the reason that they lighten their skin is that they are not accepted," she said, adding that in many places around the world "your likelihood of getting a job depends on your skin color."

For many people, the discrimination starts at home. Some family members may call only lighter-skinned relatives beautiful, or treat them better than darker-skinned relatives.

In a recent interview, the actress Lupita Nyong'o shared with BBC that the discomfort she felt with her complexion began at an early age.

"I definitely grew up feeling," she says, before pausing and cringing, "uncomfortable with my skin color because I felt like the world around me awarded lighter skin."

Ms. Nyong'o, an Oscar-winning actress, wrote a children's book this year titled " Sulwe," about colorism and self-esteem. She said she wrote the book so that children with darker skin could see themselves reflected in stories.

Colorism is not hidden - it parades itself on magazine covers, in big-budget films, on television and on social media.

In March, as Chris Rock presented an N.A.A.C.P. award, he made a joke about the actor Jussie Smollett, who at the time was embroiled in a controversy with the Chicago Police Department.

"What a waste of light skin, you know?" Mr. Rock said to the audience. "You know what I could do with that light skin? That curly hair? My career would be out of here."

Mr. Rock, who is dark-skinned, delivered the lines to an audience that burst into laughter.

So how does the narrative change?

"The biggest thing is to redefine what beauty is," Ms. Adawe said. "It is so much embedded in cultures that we need to retrain the colonized mind to make sure that even in the education system we create, it promotes all skin colors," she added.

Proper representation of people with dark skin in the mainstream media is also important, Ms. Adawe said.

"If you don't have a role model, that can be hard," she said. "If all you see are people that are succeeding are a different color than you, that they are all white, that impacts a lot of young people."

Another way to move forward is to be more aware of colorism - when creating, hiring or teaching.

"The beauty standard," Ms. Adawe said, "cannot be one skin color."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fight Against Colorism Takes On Amazon: Beauty 'Cannot Be One Skin Color' (Published 2019)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After two nonprofits delivered 23,000 signatures to Amazon asking it to remove skin-bleaching products with high levels of mercury, the company listened. That weight can be so immense that it pushes some people to take radical steps to change their complexions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
've been building a profile as a writer and broadcaster long enough to know that there will be public storms. Some creep up on you, others you sense brewing, and some have been lingering in the background for a lifetime.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted on social media about having "lost out" on hosting a documentary to a lighter-skinned black woman. The subject of the documentary was maternal mortality in the UK, and the harrowing fact that black women are five times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. This is something I have campaigned on for several years, wrote about in my book I Am Not Your Baby Mother and experienced first-hand when I almost died a few days after the birth of my first child in 2013.

I had been in talks with a production company about developing a documentary on the subject for much of last year, so I was hurt (but not entirely shocked) to learn that a similar film, from a different company, with a light-skinned, mixed-raced pop star as the host, had already been commissioned. Perhaps their show got the green light for unrelated reasons, but the sensation of losing out to a lighter-skinned person was depressingly familiar. The storm that followed my post felt like it was a long time coming - and in some ways I welcomed it.

If 2020 was the year the world decided it was time for a proper conversation about racism, then 2021 is definitely the year we need to face up to colourism. Colourism is discrimination against dark-skinned people. It comes from within the community as well as without, and is an issue across many races, including mine.

Growing up in south London in the early 90s, I found colourism played a far bigger role in my life than racism. Brixton was so full of "diversity" (before it was a buzzword) that my six-year-old self would definitely have said that most people in the UK were black.

But early on I noticed that children were far nicer to my lighter-skinned friends than to me. It wasn't until a boy with the same complexion as me pointed out that I was "too black and ugly" to ever be chased in a game of kiss chase that the penny finally dropped. As I grew up, the majority of black women I saw in movies, on TV and in magazines were fair skinned. Those who looked like me were never cast as the lead or love interest; they were at best the funny sidekick. Of course, there were exceptions, the most famous being Oprah Winfrey: her show was a staple in our Caribbean household. And, of course, there was Naomi Campbell, one of the supermodels, raised a stone's throw from me in Streatham. But can you name many others?

After I posted about the casting choice of that documentary, I heard from many black women about how they have been affected by colourism: actors who felt overlooked for roles; one woman who wrote that she was encouraged by her mother to use bleaching creams "because she thinks my dark skin tone is why no one will marry me". It helped me remember that I wasn't being too sensitive, overthinking it, or being "ungrateful", as one black man had commented. Apparently I should be happy to have achieved all I have, "given how you look". I have met this attitude everywhere.

All black women face prejudice, but the truth is that mixed-raced and lighter-skinned black women have been granted a degree of privilege. Research looking at 12,000 female prisoners in North Carolina found that sentences for lighter-skinned women are, on average, 12% shorter than for dark-skinned inmates. In 2014, the founder of dating website OkCupid shared data showing that dark-skinned black women are the least likely to be approached on his site. Even the UK passport system is biased: according to a BBC investigation last year, women with the darkest skin were four times more likely to have their photograph rejected than those with the lightest skin.

Post Black Lives Matter, the media are more willing to tell black stories and the public increasingly open to hearing them - but the presenters, actors and storytellers being amplified are often still pale skinned. Perhaps they are seen as a safer bet; people who a majority-white audience might see themselves in. The producer of the documentary asked me to be interviewed about my near-death birth experience. When I asked why I could be a subject but not a presenter I was told that that they prefer their presenters to go on a "journey of discovery".

I am personally pretty exhausted. As with racism, combating colourism is going to take a group effort, and some difficult conversations. Commissioners and editors are going to have to make bolder, braver choices. Lighter-skinned presenters and writers will also have to be honest about whether they are really the best person to lead on certain subjects, and if they aren't, to step aside.

I won't hold my breath: I recently found out that another documentary is being made for a major TV channel with a different light-skinned black pop star at the helm. The subject? Colourism.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
It's time to face up to colourism | Candice Brathwaite

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
've been building a profile as a writer and broadcaster long enough to know that there will be public storms. Some creep up on you, others you sense brewing, and some have been lingering in the background for a lifetime.

# data[].attributes.body
Implementation of community resources, that strive on racial issues amongst Black individuals, and teach self love, and acceptance.

Unity community programs

Parents taking more initiative with their kids and teaching them racial equality, and that all black is beautiful.

Holding media responsible

# data[].attributes.body
Schools have be known over centuries to be historically biased. Only teaching the White mans perspective. Leaving room for era and leaving room for negative stereotypes.

Schools should be more inclusive when teaching history, and also modernize the curriculum to fit today's issues within society. Showing a side of Black excellence rather than oppression.

# data[].attributes.body
Reflection is a must for growth. We all need to reflect on our views of the world and how it shapes our perception of the people in it. Coming to a common ground within ourselves first. Then we can fix the division colorism has created.