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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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Every individual is born with a specific culture and color. Respecting each and every person is society’s duty. Society fails in doing so by treating each individual based on their color. Society has two ways to see a person and that is black and white. Whites are given the higher position and well treatment whereas blacks are treated in an opposite way than whites.

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The major thesis in this book, are broken down into two components. The first is how we define racism, and the impact that definition has on how we see and understand racism. Dr. Beverly Tatum chooses to use the definition given by “David Wellman that defines racism as a system of advantages based on race” (1470). This definition of racism helps to establish Dr. Tatum’s theories of racial injustice and the advantages either willingly or unwillingly that white privilege plays in our society today. The second major thesis in this book is the significant role that a racial identity has in our society.

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The NAACP’s primary goal during Du Bois’ time was to invalidate the decision of Plessy v. Ferguson. He was fond of Booker T. Washington, mentioned earlier, and many of his own views surrounded the concept of double consciousness. Du Bois believed that as a result of Plessy v. Ferguson African Americans began to judge themselves based on white standards, ultimately leading to the internal acceptance of inferiority. He describes the state of double consciousness as, “a peculiar sensation this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others…” (143). In other words, black people have reached a state of double consciousness where they look at themselves in the way that white people look at them.

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The Mis-Education of the Negro is one of the controversial books by Woodson, which attempts to convince the blacks in America that they have accepted white domination as the consequence of being brainwashed. Woodson’s arguments in the book The Mis-Education of the Negro are solid, convincing, and applicable in the contemporary world. Some of the issues mentioned in the book, which were facing the African-Americans, are still relevant today. When the

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Du Bois take on the Color Line Question: Class and Race in the Globalization Age William Edward Burghardt Dubois born in 1868 and died in 1963 was a Black American academic, activist for peace and civil rights, and socialist who wrote about sociology, philosophy, race equality, history and education. The evaluation of W.E.B Du Bois’s studies brings out social and intellectual initiatives especially his color line concept and its role to the history of African Americans (Butler, 2000). The color line concept is the role of racism and race in society and history. However, an analysis that is multidimensional which finds and evaluates the intersection of race together with class as modes of resistance and domination on national and international

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By doing this, he influenced people to sympathize for the lynching victims and helped "push for legislation …to outlaw the cruel extrajudicial killings" (NAACP). There were many articles and books that Du Bois wrote to help end discrimination against the African American community. One of the most notable collection of essays is The Souls of Black Folk. In these essays, Du Bois used the term "double consciousness" as it related to the Black experience during the 1900s (NAACP). The term referred to the "sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others" which in this case was through the eyes of racism of that time (Pittman).

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The ongoing problem of discrimination due to appearance has affected many, specifically black people. One of the most unusual things with no point or definition. This prejudice against black people has caused much unification within the United States. The lives of these black people have been severely affected, as it has affected their acts, appearances, and ways of life. As Brent Staples explains in his essay “Black Men and Public Space,” black people deal with many problems, from discrimination, and he explains these points in an orderly manner and each very thoroughly.

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Du Bois wanted to show people what it was to African American in America. Du Bois belive that African Americans was held back from achieving equality. Du Bois’s double consciousness was about always looking at oneself through the eyes of others. Du Bois claimed that African Americans struggle with multi-faceted conception of self “a double consciousness”. In this

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In the essay, “A Genealogy of Modern Racism”, the author Dr. Cornel West discusses racism in depth, while conveying why whites feel this sense of superiority. We learn through his discussion that whites have been forced to treat black harshly due to the knowledge that was given to them about the aesthetics of beauty and civility. This knowledge that was bestowed on the whites in the modern West, taught them that they were superior to all races tat did not emulate the norms of whites. According to Dr. West the very idea that blacks were even human beings is a concept that was a “relatively new discovery of the modern West”, and that equality of beauty, culture, and intellect in blacks remains problematic and controversial in intellectual circles

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Hence, they crave peer acceptance in both, receiving genuine approval from neither” (West 139). Another renowned description of this phenomenon by Malcolm X is a metaphor stating that there are two kinds of slaves, the house negro and the field negro. Malcolm says that the house negroes love and protect the white master while field negroes hate and resist him, while this rhetorical device can be useful in highlighting differences amongst black people it’s a broad over generalization, and plain negligence to try and fit a black person in one of the two categories. Nevertheless, Malcolm creates a clear analysis of the issue of double-consciousness, showing that he understands the complexity of the matter at hand and that he is knowledgeable on the subject, hence utilizing ethos. While Malcolm X strongly believes that “black self-love and black self-determination [will make black people] free of the tension generated by ‘double-consciousness’”

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A study indicates that dark-skinned African Americans face a distinct disadvantage when applying for jobs. Matthew Harrison, a doctoral student at UGA undertook the first significant study of "colorism" in the workplace. He found that a light-skinned black male can have only a bachelor's degree and typical work experience and still be preferred over a dark-skinned black male with an M.B.A. and past managerial positions, simply because expectations of the light-skinned black male are much higher, and he doesn't appear as “menacing' as the darker-skinned male applicant.” This finding is possibly due to the common belief that fair-skinned blacks probably have more similarities with whites than do dark-skinned blacks, which in turn makes whites feel more comfortable around them. (Harrison

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The minds of black people have been brainwashed into thinking that people with more European features are more beautiful. Janie’s appearance models power, reflects society’s hypocrisy, and shows the distinction between the inner

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Du Bois is an essential read as it demonstrates a concept the “veil” of race, the double-consciousness, and the aspects of life dominated by the concept of racism and culture in America. In particular, Du Bois presents the idea of double consciences, which is described as two-ness in a person. “One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder” (DuBois 38). Du Bois refers to this as the ability to see oneself through another’s eyes, having the ability to have more than one perspective of how people see us versus how we see ourselves. In that same token, we struggle to identify who we are because we see who we are for our true selves but are being told

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The ideology is also analyzed through its social and physiological effects on black people through Fanon’s “The Fact of Blackness”. Fanon’s “The Fact of Blackness” and Gayle Jr.’s “Cultural Strangulation” makes it clear to see that Whiteness and the White Aesthetic has oppressed the race of black people by promoting the ideology that black people are inferior to white people, this ideology is used to make black people incapable of seeing their true superiority. In Fanon’s, “The Fact of Blackness” he identifies society’s view on blackness and its physiological effect on black people though analyzing his identity as a black man.

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Double consciousness is a term coined by W.E.B. DuBois in his The Souls of Black Folk. He describes it as, “a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity”(2). The theory of double consciousness is the idea that the African American must navigate the voyages of life from within a form of “two-ness” (2), because he is both man, and black.

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