Addressing Colorism in Womxn of Color Spaces
During a panel presentation in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dr. David Stovall shared a comment that remains with me: "White supremacy wins by how much you value it." Dr. Stovall explained that communities across the globe have been historically forced into loving whiteness[1] instead of loving ourselves—our bodies, our features, and our communities. As a Queer Punjabi Womxn of Color whose family history includes British colonization, forced refugee migration, and U.S. settler immigration, Dr. Stovall's words resonated immediately. To this day, in conversations with my elders, during trips back to India, I encounter a love for whiteness, fairness, straight hair and the subsequent practices (e.g. skin bleaching; cautionary tales; marriage customs) that maintain this divisive system. Through my parents’ migration and settlement on Turtle Island, I have seen how valuation for whiteness can be packaged across national boundaries and transmitted through ideologies left unquestioned. Survival, even reluctantly, may have been one reason for adoring whiteness in the past but what drives its continuation today?
To be clear, those who find themselves unconsciously or consciously committed to whiteness, like my family and I, are not going around making our complicity known. In fact, if you grew up as a Desi kid in the U.S. in the 1990s, odds are you never heard your Punjabi parents say, "I love whiteness or gora (white) people."
So how does Whiteness still find itself in immigrant communities of color and what does it have to do with colorism and how WOC relate?
Margaret Hunter, a professor of sociology at Mills College, has produced exhaustive research on colorism, describing it as one of the two systems of racial discrimination in the U.S. The other system includes race, which Hunter (2007) explains is most often associated with racial discrimination, which she tries to complicate with an analysis of color. For instance, though African Americans, regardless of skin-tones, are subjected to racial discrimination, the intensity and frequency shifts based on skin tone, hair texture, and other phenotypical features (Hunter, 2007). In other words, colorism and race categories are two different but connected realities. Colorism speaks to the intensity and frequency of discrimination an individual might experience. Through colonialism, anti-Black slavery logics, U.S. white supremacy, and global class divisions, colorism was birthed and remains fueled by a valuation of whiteness as rational, clean, safe and beautiful and darkness, including Blackness2, as irrational, inhumane, and lacking (Dumas, 2016; Dumas & ross, 2016; Hunter, 2007).
Returning to my earlier question, the last thing my parents wanted my brother or I to be like is gora people, who in their eyes made questionable decisions (e.g. dating; eating meat; drinking alcohol), were susceptible to racist behaviors and showed zero concern for their elders or collective communities. Instead, my parents were operating and working from historical and cultural scripts about what whiteness, as a commodity, affords one in a post-colonized India and global society. These scripts are consistent with the research that shows lighter-skinned folx positively experience outcomes related to structural levels, such as health and economic wealth (e.g. more likely to be employed), as well as cultural levels, such as beauty and marriage than darker-skinned folx (Hunter, 2007).
In WOC spaces, I have heard lighter-skinned folx express colorism as unfavorable, pointing out how their authenticity or credibility is questioned. Heck, I have even wondered if I was “WOC”-enough, revealing my assumptions that WOC identity is reserved for Black or darker-skinned folx. Though these are valid experiences, they must be distinguished from the system of colorism. Whereas lighter skinned WOC might experience discomfort psychologically and emotionally with feeling inauthentic or not enough, darker-skinned folx must deal with economic, material, and structural consequences (Hunter, 2007).
Having spent significant time learning about WOC identity as a political project, one where collaboration, conflict, and differences are necessary, my fear is that limited conversations on colorism in these spaces risk the degree to which solidarity and coalition work is possible. Take for instance the dark-skinned participant in Hunter’s (2007) research who shares she is unwilling to trust lighter-skinned womxn. Trust in a world that values whiteness cannot be simply earned and implicates all self-identified WOC invested in solidarity to explore assumptions and, in my case, disrupt familial scripts. Undoing a historical legacy of division is no easy feat, but it may begin with a powerful idea that shifts us away from valuing White supremacy and towards loving ourselves and our communities. We may begin to ask:
Beyond tokenizing, how can I (re)center darkness and Blackness in my life and in my communities as critical and necessary?
References
Cabrera, N. L. Corces-Zimmerman, C., & Utt, R. J. (2020). Engaging white students. In S. J. Quaye, S. R.
Harper, & S. L. Pendakur (Eds.), Student engagement in higher education: Theoretical perspectives and practical approaches for diverse populations (3rd ed), (pp. 104-122). New York, NY: Routledge.
Dumas, M.J. (2016). Against the dark: Antiblackness in education policy and discourse. Theory into Practice, 55(1), 11-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2016.1116852
Dumas, M. J. & ross, k. m. (2016). "Be real Black for me": Imagining BlackCrit in education. Urban Education, 51(4), 415-442. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085916628611
Hunter. M. (2007). The persistent problem of colorism: Skin tone, status, and inequality. Sociology Compass, 1, 237–254. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.00006.x
Stovall, D & Gabriel, C. (2019, January 15). Building bridges across ethnic and racial ethnic lines. [Panel presentation]. Northeastern Illinois University.
Taylor, S. R. (2018). The body is not an apology: The power of radical self-love. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler.
The Santa Cruz Feminist of Color Collective. (2014). Building on "the Edge of Each Other's Battles": A feminist of color multidimensional lens. Hypatia, 29(1), 23-40. https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12062
Notes:
[1] I use "whiteness" as separate and distinct from white people. Whiteness, as studied in Critical Whiteness Studies, is used as a social concept and ideology to understand how social structures are used to maintain racial oppression in a way that favors white people and harms People of Color. This shift towards whiteness allows for us to think about racial domination as a systematic practice and "essential in deflecting individual claims of 'But I'm not a racist'" (Cabrera et al., 2020, p. 105).
[2] Dumas’s (2016) study of anti-Blackness in education and Dumas and ross's (2016) theoretical contribution, specifically BlackCrit theory, collectively describe how the U.S. used anti-Black logics to justify slavery and lay the conditions for seeing humanity as synonymous with White property owners and distinct from Black people, who have been and are presently treated as objects and denied their humanity. I view colorism as a tool through which anti-Blackness persists in the U.S. today. Non-Black people of color can corroborate with anti-Black logics, such as colorism, to secure their humanity. Comparatively, in Black spaces where life-making is possible, there may still be remnants of anti-Black logics that persist in the form of colorism.