March 4, 2005 — We all know about racism, about whites discriminating against blacks. The prevelance of "colorism" — black on black discrimination, is less known, but it's an open secret in the black community.
Imagine this. You're asked to look at photos of faces and then give them a score of 1 to 5 to rate how smart you think the people in the photographs are. But there's a trick.
Mixed in with the 60 photos are pictures of the same person, but the photos are altered to make the person look darker skinned. Will that affect whether someone is rated smart? You bet.
There is still plenty of discrimination by skin color in this world, and in test after test like this one, the lighter-skinned people are perceived to be smarter, wealthier, even happier. It may surprise you that among those who rated differently, both whites and blacks give lower scores to people with darker skin. In our test, on average, the lighter faces were rated smarter.
While many blacks do not discriminate against each other by color this attitude is not unique. The fact that blacks often treat other blacks differently, based on the shade of their skin, is an open secret in the black community.
Comedian Paul Mooney talks about it on stage. In one of his routines he said, "At home where I come from, Louisiana, we have the saying for it: 'If you brown, hang around. If you yellow, you mellow. If you white, you all right. If you black, get back.' "
Yet Spike Lee was criticized for being so honest about colorism in his 1987 movie, "School Daze." In the film, light-skinned and dark-skinned girls faced off and called each other names like "tar baby," "Barbie doll," "wannabe white" and "jigaboo."
Students Say They Grew Up With 'Colorism'
I spoke to University of Maryland students who say they've grown up with colorism.
"My mom said they used to always call me, um, chocolate baby," said Shondra. "African-Americans went out of their way to make sure that I knew that me being black was something that wasn't to be seen as beautiful," said Ted.
"The worst insult a dark-skinned boy as a child, ever got is to be called African," Jason said. "You can call me anything in the book when I was younger. Just don't call me African," he added.
Jason said people equate Africa to "savage."
Erica said one of her friends told her she was "pretty for a dark-skinned girl." By contrast, some lighter-skinned blacks I spoke to say colorism helped them.
"I guess I've benefited from the colorism, because I'm light skinned, because I've always had the long, straight hair," said Markita, another University of Maryland student. "I thought I was just pretty."
'Blue Vein' Societies and the 'Paper Bag' Test
Historians say the friction between blacks of different shades began during slavery because light-skinned blacks, often the children of slaves and their white masters, got better treatment.
"They were the ones who maybe worked in the house, as opposed to the darker-skinned Africans who worked in the fields who were beaten more readily," explained historian Anthony Browder.
Lighter skin "began to be associated with privilege and it became associated with beauty," said Marita Golden, author of "Don't Play in the Sun: One Woman's Journey Through the Color Complex."
After slavery, skin color continued to divide blacks. Light-skinned blacks formed exclusive clubs, Golden said.
"These groups of people were called Blue Vein societies, because in order to quote "belong," the test of how light you were was could you see your blue veins through your skin? And if they could, you were in," she said.
Some had to pass the "paper bag test" to get into some churches, fraternities and nightclubs. "The paper bag would be held against your skin. And if you were darker than the paper bag, you weren't admitted," Golden said.
"Animosity had to grow out of that unfair relationship. Darker-skinned blacks began to resent light-skinned blacks who were given opportunities to succeed," Browder said.
Hollywood, Music Videos Reinforce Bias
The Black Power movement was supposed to change those attitudes, and it did change some things. Suddenly there were some dark-skinned male stars who played the "hero" — Richard Roundtree played "Shaft," and other stars followed, like Samuel L. Jackson, Wesley Snipes, and Oscar winners Denzel Washington and Jamie Foxx.
But the acceptance of darker skin seems to apply mostly to the macho guys. The part of the successful, educated black almost always goes to someone with lighter skin.
Actor Mel Jackson says light-skinned men like him tend to get the role of the "business executive."
"If the character's supposed to be more successful or more, more articulate or have a better background, they'll easily cast me in that character," he said.
Actress Wendy Raquel Robinson has noticed the difference. "I've never been offered, you know, the crackhead or the distressed mother," she said. "I play the very upscale, educated young lady," Robinson said. "I do have some peers that are a lot darker than myself. They don't get the opportunities."
For a black actress to become a leading lady, she'd better be light. Or maybe Hispanic, like Eva Mendes, Will Smith's love interest in the current hit, "Hitch." The light-skinned Mendes has played Denzel Washington's wife in two films.
Colorism is especially prevalent in music videos. Kids we talked to on the street noticed that. And said they liked it.
"They all light skinned and they all look good," one boy said. "There's a lot of dark-skinned girls that are pretty, with long hair, bad, but they're not in the videos though, it's just the light-skinned ones that's in the videos," another added.
"The darker the woman takes on what I refer to as a "Ho" complex. She is the prostitute," said Karen a University of Maryland student. "The lighter a woman is, well, she's the goddess. She's the untouchable. She is the woman that all the men in the video aspire to have," she said.
Markita sees it as a straightforward message: "If you want to be successful, this is what you have to do. You have to become more white. You have to assimilate yourself to the standard of beauty," she said.
Golden said we need to "face up to the fact that colorism is still very much with us."
It's one more thing to think about when we talk about a color-blind society.
Posted: Wed 15 Jun 2005 18:58 Post subject: Colorism
I just had a thought, why are we using terms like "racism" to indicate colorism when so-called whites practice discrimination against so-called blacks? We really are all the same race. Isn't all of this merely colorism?
Posted: Wed 15 Jun 2005 19:05 Post subject: Re: Colorism
mixedmom wrote:
I just had a thought, why are we using terms like "racism" to indicate colorism when so-called whites practice discrimination against so-called blacks? We really are all the same race. Isn't all of this merely colorism?
No, at least I would not use the term that way. "Racism" (defined as Whites mistreating Blacks merely because of their "race") is independent of appearance. My research into the rise and triumph of the one-drop rule, in fact, centers on people who were involuntarily defined as Black and then mistreated as being Black, despite their utterly European looks. Colorism. on the other hand, depends entirely on looks. I see colorism in Puerto Rico, for example, where the "race" notion of "a White-looking Black person" just makes people laugh.
Is racism a proper term for the English mistreatment of the Irish? What about Japanese mistreatment of ethnic Koreans in Japan? Racism seems to have two criteria, it must contain colorism combined with ethnic discrimination. The term just sounds like a misnomer.
Is racism a proper term for the English mistreatment of the Irish? What about Japanese mistreatment of ethnic Koreans in Japan?
Or what about Black mistreatment of Whites? Those are the kind of questions that make me avoid the terms (racism or racist) in my writing. They mean too many different things to too many people.
Another problem is that the academic world has come to accept (and demand compliance with) a definition that only Whites can be the perpetrators of racism and only Blacks can be the targets. So a scholarly journal editor would answer all three of the above questions unhesitatingly: (1) "no" because the (Irish) targets are not Black, (2) "no" because the (Japanese) perpetrators are not White, and (3) "no" for both reasons. I think such a definition is nonsense, but I must comply if I want my work looked on favorably by other historians. My solution is to shun the word.
Nevertheless, I do think that nuances of group identification and inter-group hostility are important. And so, FWIW, in my writing I distinguish between voluntary self-identity and involuntary group membership imposed by society. I also distinguish between hostility towards someone because he or she has (a) chosen the wrong self-identity, (b) has been forcibly assigned the wrong group membership, or (c) looks too much like "the other." Seen thus, I would say that your first case was an example of "a". The second was a case of "b". And the third (my example) was "c". Colorism would also be "c" and my one-drop rule legal cases are "b".
Last edited by fwsweet on Wed 15 Jun 2005 20:19; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Wed 15 Jun 2005 19:47 Post subject: John Stossel and "Colorism"
John Stossel is a poor excuse for a journalist. He is promoting the "one drop" myth and forced hypodescent by telling people that "blacks" can be "lights-skinned" and that this is somehow natural. He might as well tell us how Jews practice "colorism" by favoring Jews who look "Aryan" or Nordic (non-Jewish). Notice that he treats Hispanics as another "race." This hides the fact that mixed-race Hispanics are given a protection from black claims that mixed-race non-Hispanics and non-Arabs don't receive. The audience has no idea how these white-descended people with long hair and light skin came to be 'black."
I also question this "paper bag" story. I have often heard it repeated, but I have never seen anything written in which a person said: "I was a member of Club ________, Located in the city/town of ________. Our standards for membership included testing the skin color of prospective applicants against the color of a standard brown paper bag."
I strongly suspect it is a myth. Mulatto clubs definitely existed (and may still exist), but they probably operated in the same way upwardly mobile Latin Americans do: Money whitens. I remember Carl Degler quoting a Brazilian, middle-class mulatto father who supposedly told his daughters the racial standards for prospective sons-in-law: "A worker only if he is white. A Negro only if he is a doctor."
Posted: Wed 15 Jun 2005 20:17 Post subject: Re: John Stossel and "Colorism"
Powell wrote:
I also question this "paper bag" story. ... I strongly suspect it is a myth.
History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other. I have found numerous references to the paper-bag test, ranging from The Brown Fellows Society of 1790 Charleston to Jack and Jill of 1940 Philadelphia. But all of these references simply cite other references as their sources. I too have never seen a real live primary source confirming this custom.
If anyone out there has a primary (first-hand) account on this, please speak up.
Posted: Wed 15 Jun 2005 20:41 Post subject: Re: John Stossel and "Colorism"
Powell wrote:
John Stossel is a poor excuse for a journalist. He is promoting the "one drop" myth and forced hypodescent by telling people that "blacks" can be "lights-skinned" and that this is somehow natural. He might as well tell us how Jews practice "colorism" by favoring Jews who look "Aryan" or Nordic (non-Jewish). Notice that he treats Hispanics as another "race." This hides the fact that mixed-race Hispanics are given a protection from black claims that mixed-race non-Hispanics and non-Arabs don't receive. The audience has no idea how these white-descended people with long hair and light skin came to be 'black."
That's because when people are talking about "light-skinned blacks" they are generally referring to people who fall within a range of phenotypes that show African ancestry coupled with light skin tones. Although people who have no visible African ancestry are also included in the light skinned black category, they are not what most people think of when they talk about light-skinned blacks.
As far as Hispanics are concerned, their African ancestry is rarely brought up because most Americans, including those in the media and Hispanic Americans, equate Hispanic with Mexican (they are the overall majority of Hispanics in this country). Mexicans/Mexican Americans are seen, and see themselves, as mestizo (Indian and Spanish); in the main they show very little African ancestry, hence Hispanics' African ancestry is rarely brought up. Additionally, very few Americans are aware that some Mexicans/Mexican Americans have recent African ancestry.
Historically, most Arabs in this country have come from Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. These Arabs often look like Southern Europeans. In the main, they don't look like they have any African ancestry. People from North Africa, Yemen, Suadi Arabia are more likely to have obvious African ancestry, but they don't figure as prominently in the Arab American community.
Quote:
I also question this "paper bag" story. I have often heard it repeated, but I have never seen anything written in which a person said: "I was a member of Club ________, Located in the city/town of ________. Our standards for membership included testing the skin color of prospective applicants against the color of a standard brown paper bag."
Supposedly clubs like that existed in Washington DC. One had to come from from an established Colored or Negro family (almost always light), as well as exhibit good breading and manners. Those were the criteria for membership.
Posted: Fri 17 Jun 2005 03:38 Post subject: Re: John Stossel and "Colorism"
G-Man wrote:
THE WIFE OF HIS YOUTH
I should have known that you were a Chesnutt fan! He is one of my favorite authors, especially his early works. He reminds me of O. Henry and Mark Twain. Do you have a copy of Chesnutt's Tales of Conjure and the Color Line (which includes the above short story)? If so, which one is your favorite tale?
Posted: Fri 17 Jun 2005 12:52 Post subject: Re: John Stossel and "Colorism"
fwsweet wrote:
G-Man wrote:
THE WIFE OF HIS YOUTH
I should have known that you were a Chesnutt fan! He is one of my favorite authors, especially his early works. He reminds me of O. Henry and Mark Twain. Do you have a copy of Chesnutt's Tales of Conjure and the Color Line (which includes the above short story)? If so, which one is your favorite tale?
I cannot tell a lie....With the exception of the link I provided, I've never read anything by him. I have heard of him and read a few things about him written by other people.
I'm puzzled by him. He was from Ohio(?) and I know he may have come from one of those free mulatto communities out there. But some of what I've read about him depicts him as a black-identified person.
Now that you've posted some of his works, I'm going to read them.
BTW, do you or anyone else have information on the history of these communities in Ohio? PBS' Frontline did a story on the Jefferson/Hemmings controversy some years back and mentioned that one of the Hemmings sons migrated to one of those communities in the 19th Century.
He was from Ohio(?) and I know he may have come from one of those free mulatto communities out there. But some of what I've read about him depicts him as a black-identified person.
Charles Waddell Chesnutt was born on June 20, 1858, in Cleveland of parents who were of mostly European ancestry. Nevertheless, his parents self-identified with Ohio's upper-crust Colored community. They had originally migrated from North Carolina during the 1830s race-relations crash. They were the Mulatto elite branch of a respected but split NC family. The Chesnutts moved back to North Carolina after the war, when Charles was seven, and so his formative years were spent there. They operated a grocery store, having been set up in business by the family's White branch. As G-man suggests, Charles adopted a Black self-identity even though he once computed that he had only one-sixteenth Black ancestry (making him genetically Whiter than millions of Whites and virtually all Hispanics). As a young adult, he embarked on a teaching career, becoming an instructor in 1874, an assistant principal in 1877, and the principal of the State Colored Normal School in 1879. But Fayetteville had a minuscule Mulatto elite community and he felt intellectually isolated, so he moved North in 1883. After a few months in New York as a journalist, he moved to Cleveland where he was born, and became a lawyer, passing the Ohio bar in 1887. His professional writing career began when he sold his first story, "The Goophered Grapevine," to The Atlantic Monthly in 1887.
I love Chesnutt's stories because I love folklore (folk music, folk dance, folk tales, etc.) and Chesnutt uses former slave folktales as his base layer (the way that Joel Chandler Harris used the Anansi tales). But Chesnutt's best stories have many layers and conclude with an intellectual bite that makes you wonder if the character telling the tale was just putting you on all along. For example, one of my favorites is "Dave's Neckliss."
A well-to-do Mulatto elite couple buy and renovate a NC plantation in the 1880s. "Old Julius," an elderly gent who had been a slave on the plantation before the war, is one of their employees. The wife has just prepared a beautiful smoked ham. Julius appears at the kitchen door on a farm errand, moments after ham's aroma has wafted from the big house. The wife offers Julius a sample, but he refuses. He says that smoked ham reminds him too much of the tragic way that "Poor Dave" died, many years before, during slavery days.
"Old Julius" then tells his employer's young wife the harrowing tale of "Poor Dave," a slave who had been falsely accused by a rival of stealing a smoked ham from the master's kitchen. As punishment, the slaveowner ordered a smoked ham to be chained around Dave's neck, to rot there as a lesson and an example. The unjustly punished Dave descended into depression and eventually hallucinated that he was turning into a smoked ham himself. The sad tale ends with Dave's body being found hanging by the neck from the smokehouse ceiling. He had committed suicide by trying to smoke himself. After telling this tale of horror, Julius sadly walks out the kitchen and back to his duties, leaving his employer's wife aghast. End of story?
Now the bite. The last lines of Chesnutt's tale (told in the autobiographical first-person voice of the Mulatto elite owner of the renovated former slave plantation) are:
Chesnutt wrote:
At breakfast, next morning, it occurred to me that I should like a slice of ham. I said as much to my wife.
"Oh, no, John," she responded, "you shouldn't eat anything so heavy for breakfast."
I insisted.
"The fact is," she said pensively, "I couldn't have eaten any more of that ham, and I gave it to Julius."
Chesnutt's writing became increasingly bitter after the mid-1890s. Like many other Black artists of the time (James Bland, Scott Joplin, Rosamund Johnson), his productive years began during a tolerance peak in the U.S. color line. Like those others, he truly believed and eagerly hoped that the color line was dissolving via intermarriage. He foresaw a mixed, diverse America where every ethnic self-identity was voluntary and changeable at each individual's whim. [See, for example his optimistic essay "The Future American" in The Boston Evening Transcript (August 18, 1900), reprinted in Werner Sollors, Theories of Ethnicity: A Classical Reader (Washington Square NY: New York University, 1996).] Like those other artists, he did not see, he could not know, that the era of the worst government-sanctioned terrorism against its own citizens in American history was starting. Like those other artists, his creative talents were slowly crushed by the realization that whenever he thought that things could not possibly get any worse, they got worse.
He died in 1932, a bit more than a decade after President Wilson stood on the White House balcony to cheer assembled ranks of Klansmen marching down Pennsylvania Avenue.
G-Man wrote:
Do you or anyone else have information on the history of these communities in Ohio? PBS' Frontline did a story on the Jefferson/Hemmings controversy some years back and mentioned that one of the Hemmings sons migrated to one of those communities in the 19th Century.
Not really. Eston, his wife Julian Ann Isaacs, his brother Jim-Mad, and his mother Sally all moved to Chillicothe, Ohio, in the 1830s. (After Sally died, Eston and Jim-Mad went their separate ways.) Cincinnati also had a large Black community, and Wilberforce University, the earliest-founded traditional Black school, is in what was then Xenia, Ohio. Southern Ohio probably developed antebellum Black communities because it was free soil (Kentucky, across the river, was slavery). Oddly, about 15 years after Ohio cruelly dispossessed and exiled its Black Cincinnatians to Canada in 1829, a reaction set in and Ohioans welcomed Blacks back into the state, adopting a unique "1/2" blood fraction rule of color line definition (you were White if most of your ancestors were White). A good place to start might be V. Jacque Voegeli, Free But Not Equal: The Midwest and the Negro During the Civil War (Chicago, 1967).
Last edited by fwsweet on Sun 30 Sep 2007 15:29; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Fri 17 Jun 2005 16:10 Post subject: Chesnutt
Chesnutt seems to me to represent the type of Mulatto Elite who believed that calling themselves part of the "Negro race" would reveal the inconsistencies and contradictions of racial classification and somehow lead "whites" to repudiate racially discriminatory laws. This idea persists into the present. It goes something like this: "Mr. Chestnutt, how can some one as intelligent and handsome as you be a Negro? If you are a Negro, then Negroes must be equal to whites and I've been wrong all my life. I am now free of prejudice." Stupid, but I've heard that reasoning used to discourage people from claiming a white identity.
Posted: Fri 17 Jun 2005 17:16 Post subject: Re: Chesnutt
Powell wrote:
Chesnutt seems to me to represent the type of Mulatto Elite who believed that calling themselves part of the "Negro race" would reveal the inconsistencies and contradictions of racial classification and somehow lead "whites" to repudiate racially discriminatory laws.
I agree, although you must also take into account that his parents felt that way, too. Many such "gut-feel" attitudes are learned in childhood. That Chesnutt had internalized this stance by adulthood is evident in his savage (and hilarious) satire on those who openly aspire to Whiteness. For example, from his story, "A Matter of Principle":
Chesnutt wrote:
The fundamental article of Mr. Clayton's social creed was that he himself was not a negro.
"I know," he would say, "that the white people lump us all together as negroes, and condemn us all to the same social ostracism. But I don't accept this classification, for my part, and I imagine that, as the chief party in interest, I have a right to my opinion. People who belong by half or more of their blood to the most virile and progressive race of modern times have as much right to call themselves white as others have to call them negroes."
Mr. Clayton spoke warmly, for he was well informed, and had thought much upon the subject; too much, indeed, for he had not been able to escape entirely the tendency of too much concentration upon one subject to make even the clearest minds morbid.
"Of course we can't enforce our claims, or protect ourselves from being robbed of our birthright; but we can at least have principles, and try to live up to them the best we can. If we are not accepted as white, we can at any rate make it clear that we object to being called black. Our protest cannot fail in time to impress itself upon the better class of white people; for the Anglo-Saxon race loves justice, and will eventually do it, where it does not conflict with their own interests."
Whether or not the fact that Mr. Clayton meant no sarcasm, and was conscious of no inconsistency in this eulogy, tended to establish the racial identity he claimed may safely be left to the discerning reader.
The point that A.D. makes, that the nation would not necessarily be better off if Anglo-American Whites with acknowleged African ancestry embraced Black self-identity, is not all that obvious to me.
Looking at ends, I cannot disagree with Chesnutt's vision of the ideal future. Looking at means, the difference between claiming Blackness and refusing to answer the "race" question (as I do) seems to be merely a matter of degree. If answering "human" works by eroding the system from within, why would it not work if every U.S. citizen were suddenly to claim to be Black?
Claiming Blackness does not mean that you have to repect Black demagogues, like the commencement speaker in the last pararaph of Bill Stamp's Article. You can claim Blackness, as Chesnutt did, and still treat the demagogues with the contempt that they deserve.
Finally, whether Euro-Americans with slight African ancestry claim Whiteness or claim Blackness, I cannot see that either approach has ever worked to erode the color line. Only intermarriage can dissolve the color line itself, and this would take at least six centuries at the current rate of change.
History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other. I have found numerous references to the paper-bag test, ranging from The Brown Fellows Society of 1790 Charleston to Jack and Jill of 1940 Philadelphia. But all of these references simply cite other references as their sources. I too have never seen a real live primary source confirming this custom.
If anyone out there has a primary (first-hand) account on this, please speak up.
You may want to check with the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority - AKA. Check their organization's history -
Posted: Fri 17 Jun 2005 20:06 Post subject: Chestnutt
Quote:
Finally, whether Euro-Americans with slight African ancestry claim Whiteness or claim Blackness, I cannot see that either approach has ever worked to erode the color line. Only intermarriage can dissolve the color line itself, and this would take at least six centuries at the current rate of change.
Yes, Chestnutt got his attitude from his parents. Most people in his position do. This is why so-called "passing" sometimes involves a break with family (for which black-identified folks and many liberals shed many crocodile tears). I'm sure David Horowitz hurt his Communist parents when he became a Republican, but no one weeps for them.
We are just entering a period when Euro-Americans with slight African ancestry either claim whiteness or do not repudiate their whiteness. Think of the Melungeons and other triracial isolates as well as the Eston Hemings Jefferson descendants, not to mention Anatole Broyard's children. So we cannot say that this way of breeching the color line is a "failure." It has not been tried before. Mixed-race slaveholders, etc. in the antebellum period don't count because society was not officially embracing a doctrine of racial equality.
The concept of the mixed-race white or European American identity will be a success if it increases acceptance for mixed ancestry in general and eases the fear of "interracial" marriage (which both black and white racists have traditionally described as the beginning of genocide for "whites"). I do NOT expect it to eliminate all the social problems of "blacks." Blacks themselves must be willing to shoulder that burden - a willingness they have not shown because screaming "Racism!" and pointing at some white people is so much easier.
Posted: Sat 18 Jun 2005 00:19 Post subject: Re: John Stossel and "Colorism"
Powell wrote:
John Stossel is a poor excuse for a journalist. He is promoting the "one drop" myth and forced hypodescent by telling people that "blacks" can be "lights-skinned" and that this is somehow natural. He might as well tell us how Jews practice "colorism" by favoring Jews who look "Aryan" or Nordic (non-Jewish). Notice that he treats Hispanics as another "race." This hides the fact that mixed-race Hispanics are given a protection from black claims that mixed-race non-Hispanics and non-Arabs don't receive. The audience has no idea how these white-descended people with long hair and light skin came to be 'black."
I also question this "paper bag" story. I have often heard it repeated, but I have never seen anything written in which a person said: "I was a member of Club ________, Located in the city/town of ________. Our standards for membership included testing the skin color of prospective applicants against the color of a standard brown paper bag."
I strongly suspect it is a myth. Mulatto clubs definitely existed (and may still exist), but they probably operated in the same way upwardly mobile Latin Americans do: Money whitens. I remember Carl Degler quoting a Brazilian, middle-class mulatto father who supposedly told his daughters the racial standards for prospective sons-in-law: "A worker only if he is white. A Negro only if he is a doctor."
I agree A.D. Examples: Gwyneth Paltrow and Tori Spelling.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Sat 18 Jun 2005 01:50 Post subject: Colorism in other peoples
G-Man wrote:
The prevelance of "colorism" — black on black discrimination, is less known, but it's an open secret in the black community.
People don't usually know but there are also great divisions in other so called "races" as well.
There is not a secret that no "race" is uniform. There are as much variety between Blacks as between Whites or East Asians. Let's see some cases.
Europeans have always suffered from colorism. North Europeans are different from South European, not only in "colour" in the features of the face, in height and in serveral other aspects. Also, East Europeans are different of Western Europeans. Those differences have fuelled a lot of discrimination and endless wars. The term "white" is not important for the European but the place where they were born. And they still hate each other very much. North Europeans consider themselves superior to the rest, but South Europeans claim Classic Civilization for them, and Eastern European have tried to prove the rest they are valuable, too. Many things are explained quite easy studying those facts.
Chineses are not as uniform as it looks at the first sight. North Chineses are usually taller, lighter, with longer faces and sharper features than South Chineses, which are short, round heads, darker. Northern people believe they are the intelectuals of China and downplay Southerners. Even today when the development is speeding in Southern China.
So, unfortunately, those problems are widespread in this world.
Posted: Sat 18 Jun 2005 17:57 Post subject: Re: Colorism in other peoples
oevega wrote:
G-Man wrote:
The prevelance of "colorism" — black on black discrimination, is less known, but it's an open secret in the black community.
People don't usually know but there are also great divisions in other so called "races" as well.
There is not a secret that no "race" is uniform. There are as much variety between Blacks as between Whites or East Asians. Let's see some cases.
Europeans have always suffered from colorism. North Europeans are different from South European, not only in "colour" in the features of the face, in height and in serveral other aspects. Also, East Europeans are different of Western Europeans. Those differences have fuelled a lot of discrimination and endless wars. The term "white" is not important for the European but the place where they were born. And they still hate each other very much. North Europeans consider themselves superior to the rest, but South Europeans claim Classic Civilization for them, and Eastern European have tried to prove the rest they are valuable, too. Many things are explained quite easy studying those facts.
Chineses are not as uniform as it looks at the first sight. North Chineses are usually taller, lighter, with longer faces and sharper features than South Chineses, which are short, round heads, darker. Northern people believe they are the intelectuals of China and downplay Southerners. Even today when the development is speeding in Southern China.
So, unfortunately, those problems are widespread in this world.
Regards,
Omar Vega
Why isn't any of this mentioned in U.S. media? Why don't the media do a study of how various whites discriminate one another? Asian groups too?
Posted: Mon 20 Jun 2005 02:05 Post subject: An Amalgamation changes naught
Quote:
Finally, whether Euro-Americans with slight African ancestry claim Whiteness or claim Blackness, I cannot see that either approach has ever worked to erode the color line. Only intermarriage can dissolve the color line itself, and this would take at least six centuries at the current rate of change.
I doubt the creation of one "race" would stop racism; just look at how the Jews have been treated in Europe or the Armenians in Turkey or the Bosnian muslims in Yugoslavia. All of these groups where white but some committed genocide against the other because the latter group were viewed as subhumans. So, I don't hold much hope for amalgation of "races" to solve "racism." People will always form some tribe that they view as superior to another. A psycho gets in power and manipulates the petty jealousies and bigotries and bingo! we have ethic cleansing.
Didn't someone just post an article on Germany? Since the fall of the Wall, the Germans have spent billions trying unsuccessfully to integrate the East. East German unemployment rates are sky high and young Germans are embracing neo-Nazism and blaming refugees for their sick economy and bleak prospects. (Replace Jew with Turk or Asian or African, and there's the latest societal leach keeping the Aryan down. Of course a little logic like the end of the Socialist gravy train in exchange for freedom and liberty (no Stasi, the secret police) might be worth it.)
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