Discrimination based on skin tone
Form of prejudice or discrimination
Discrimination based on skin tone, also known as colorism, shadeism or pigmentocracy, is a form of prejudice and discrimination in which individuals of the same race receive benefits or disadvantages based on their skin tone. More specifically, colorism is the process of discrimination that marginalizes darker-skinned people over their lighter-skinned counterparts. Historically, colorism on a global scale has colonial roots, ranging from early class hierarchies in Asia to its impact on Latinos and African Americans through European colonialism and slavery in the Americas. Colorism focuses on how racism is expressed in the psychology of a people and how it affects their concepts of beauty, wealth, and privilege. A key difference between racism and colorism is that while racism deals with the subjugation of one group by another or the belief in racial supremacy, colorism deals with in-group discrimination in addition to between-group discrimination.
The public source identifies “Discrimination based on skin tone” as form of prejudice or discrimination. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Discrimination, based and skin.
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This entry incorporates text from “Discrimination based on skin tone” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.