CONFRONTING COLOR T
In Alice Walker’s series of essays “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” colorism is defined as “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color.”
This breed of discrimination has been observed in minorities across the world. In the US, colorism plagues African American, Latinx, Hispanic and APIA populations, among others. For Hiran Gadhavi*, a 27 year-old CEO of a software company in New York, his experience with colorism primarily started after 9/11. “There was a lot of animosity towards ‘brown’ people because those are the people that blew up the towers,” he said. “When I went to the ferry to take the boat, the
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Habibi Ting*, a civil engineer in New York, detailed a similar experience. “I was called every name in the book [because of my skin color],” he said. “Terrorist, bomber, everything.” The origins of colorism dated back even earlier than slavery in America. In certain minority groups, it’s long been ingrained in the culture.
which can be seen as colorism,” Gadhavi said. “The darker your skin tone, the less valuable or poorer you are.” Ancy Jose, a 22-year-old humanities and creative writing major at Florida State University, experienced colorist ideas ever since she was young from her family, the Indian community, and the world.
design/Brianne De Los Santos
Some may confuse it with its cousin term, racism. Colloquially, racism is the discrimination of an individual based on their race. Colorism, on the other hand, uses skin tone as a metric of prejudice instead of racial or ethnic identity. This means that colorism exists even within a race or ethnicity.
police would randomly ask to check my bags like I had a bomb in there.”
photography/ Sumin Shin
heir stares were unapologetically hostile. Blinded by fear, all they saw in the young dark-skinned boy was a “terrorist” and “bomber,” regardless of what his ethnicity or race might have been. It was not the first time he had been singled out for his skin color, yet following the aftermath of 9/11, it would certainly not be the last.
by Alexandra Giang
To colorism: We are more than our skin color
