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How Does Colorism Affect Black Women

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1.6. Colorism and Racism

In her famous essay, If the Present Looks Like the Past, What Does the Future Look Like (1992) Alice Walker coined the term colorism. According to the researcher, this term refers to the prejudicial treatment affecting Black women exclusively because of their skin color. Trina Jones claims that discrimination based on colorism is visible “also apparent in employment practices” (2000: 1513). According to her, colorism refers to a sort of a system that grants better possibilities and more powerfulness in various spheres of life to those that possess lighter complexions. The research conducted in terms of this dimension shows a profound influence of colorism on black women`s lives (Jones, 2000). Skin color prejudice may be perceived as a general reluctance to African Americans that was especially visible during the time of slavery …show more content…

As a result, the black are considered to be inferior to the white and, more importantly, they are thought to be unintelligent and superficial. Discrimination against skin color is another dimension inextricably connected with both racism and colorism. It constitutes many activities which aim is to diminish the black (Pollock, 2006:3). Besides, black people have to face with some other problems, often related to their self-esteem and their self-identity. On the one hand, they want to preserve their sense of self as a black people, but, on the other hand, they sometimes resort to conformism in order to avoid discrimination. For that reason, Burghardt Du Bois came up with the term “double consciousness” which is describes to every black person who “ever feels his two-ness, – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings” (Du Bois, 1903). Although this theory is relatively old, it may be still used as a point of reference in literary

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