Hispanics. Better Have a Lighter Skin Tone.

According to a survey carried out by the Pew Research Center in the United States last year, 58% of Hispanic adults report having experienced discrimination because of their ethnicity. Experiences, however, vary by skin tone: 50% of Hispanics with lighter skin colours versus 64% of Hispanics with darker skin colours. The differences even hold after controlling variables such as gender, age, education and country of birth (U.S. vs abroad).



More Hispanics with darker skin tone (55%) than with lighter skin tone (36%) say that people tend to react as if they were not smart and are more often subject to slurs or jokes (53% vs 34%) (via).

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photograph of Benicio del Toro via

Born this day ... Dorothy Dandridge

"Dorothy Dandridge was a fighter. Growing up in The Depression and making her way through Hollywood in the ’40s, she encountered resistance — to her skin color, to her refusal to play demeaning roles — at every turn. She was assailed in the press for dating white men, and blamed herself for her husband’s philandering and her daughter’s brain damage. Nearly every societal convention was against her."
the hairpin



Dorothy Jean Dandridge (1922-1965) was a US-American actress, singer, and dancer, the first black woman featured on the cover of Life, and the first black American nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress (for a leading role) (via). While her mother, Ruby Dandridge, played stereotypical "Mammy" roles, Dorothy was told to be too pretty to play a servant. At the beginning, the fact that "she didn't look like the traditionally cast African American actors" was a barrier to her career (Murgia, 2018). Dorothy Dandridge became the ultimate metaphor of the "tragic mulatto" (Hall, 2008).
Later, the civil rights movement helped her become more and more accepted and popular (Murgia, 2018)

African American visibility as more than just an uneducated, undesirable entity in the eyes of white America was being challenged by an actor who wanted to step out of an archaic stereotype and system. She was a bridge that transitioned pigeon-holed views about African Americans, however, her role was complex, and her self-awareness made that a difficult connection to maintain. Her features and lighter skin tone would bring colorism or a caste system to the forefront in both negative and positive ways, or as she called it, her 'fortune or misfortune.' She was a beauty icon, opening doors for people of color to be more desirable, actually moving within white society circles with ease, but would create a limbo for less-exotic-looking blacks who weren't seen as attractive by white society. (Murgia, 2018)

Dandridge had relationships with white men - actors and her director Otto Preminger - at a time, the Motion Picture Production Code banned romantic relationships between black and white actors on screen (Murgia, 2018).

She wanted strong leading roles, but found her opportunities limited because of her race. According to The New York Times, Dandridge once said, "If I were Betty Grable, I could capture the world." Belafonte also addressed this issue, noting that his former co-star "was the right person in the right place at the wrong time."
With Hollywood filmmakers unable to create a suitable role for the light-skinned Dandridge, they soon reverted to subtly prejudiced visions of interracial romance. She appeared in several poorly received racially and sexually charged dramas, including Island in the Sun (1957), also starring Belafonte and Joan Fontaine, and Tamango (1958), in which she plays the mistress of the captain of a slave ship.
Among the missed opportunities from this period, Dandridge turned down the supporting role of Tuptim in The King and I (1956), because she refused to play a slave. It was rumored that she would play Billie Holliday in a film version of the jazz singer's autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, but it never panned out. (...)
While making Carmen Jones, Dandridge became involved in an affair with the film's director, Otto Preminger, who also directed Porgy and Bess. Their interracial romance, as well as Dandridge's relationships with other white lovers, was frowned upon, particularly by other African-American members of the Hollywood filmmaking community. (via)

It's a story of a life wasted as we see her determination swayed by society and the social norms of the time, as well as a mismanaged career. Her place in cinematic history is still relevant as the struggle for visible minority representation continues in the boardrooms of high-powered film executives today. Murgia (2018)

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- Hall, R. E. (2008). Racism in the 21st Century. An Empirical Analysis of Skin Color. New York: Springer Science + Business Media
- Murgia, S. J. (2018). The Encyclopedia of Racism in American Films. Lanham, Boulder, New York & London: Rowman & Littlefield.
photographs via and via and via

There Is Black. And There Is Black.

"The lighter an African American actor or model is and the more Anglo-white her features, the greater her chances are of accessing certain societal rewards such as movie or other media exposure. (...) Darker African women are made into societal misfits who are targeted for more devaluing than their lighter counterparts by the white cultural artists."
Jean & Feagin, 2015: 87f



- Jean, Y. S. & Feagin, J. R. (2015). Double Burden. Black Women and Everyday Racism. London & New York: Routledge.
- photograph of Lena Horne (1917-2010) by Wayne Miller, 1947 via (copyright by owner)

Sharon Jones

"Until the '90s, major labels were looking for a certain look. This Sony guy told me I was 'too black, too fat, too short, and too old.' Told me to go and bleach my skin. Told me to step in the background and just stay back. I had the voice, but I didn't have the looks." 
Sharon Jones

"I wasn't what they was looking for. They just looked at me and they didn't like what they saw: a short, black woman."
Sharon Jones



"Sharon Jones has battled racism, record companies and cancer."
The New York Times

Sharon Lafaye Jones - the "Female James Brown" - was born in Augusta, Georgia on 4th of May 1956. Due to segregation laws, her mother had to deliver her in the hospital's storage closet (via). Years later, when she visited her hometown North Augusta, South Carolina (where she spent the first years), she pointed out "a shop with an owner who used to sell black kids rotten candy, and also taught his parrot to greet customer with racial slurs" (via).
Jones was a singer for much of her life but released her first album when she was 40 and started getting serious attention rather later in her life. She was told to be "too short, too fat, too black and too old" but became "an unstoppable frontwoman" (via). Sharon Jones passed away on 18th of November 2016 (via).



"I chose not to put a wig on. The reason why I chose to come out with the cancer thing is because there's somebody out there who can see that all sickness isn't unto death. That it's something you can't change at that point in time, so you just got to go with it. Don't be ashamed. Don't be ashamed of looking at yourself."
Sharon Jones

"In Rikers, you had the Italians over here, the Spanish over here, the Blacks here, then there would be your Christians here and your Muslim brotherhood here. It's just like the outside, but in very closed quarters where you have to get along or else."
Sharon Jones (who used to work as a prison guard to support herself)

"A lot of people call me gay because they don't see me with anyone."
Sharon Jones

YouTube Selection (Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings)

- Retreat: LISTEN/WATCH
- I Learned the Hard Way: LISTEN/WATCH
- The Game Gets Old: LISTEN/WATCH
- Tell Me: LISTEN/WATCH
- If you Call: LISTEN/WATCH
- 100 Days, 100 Nights: LISTEN/WATCH
- Stranger to My Happiness: LISTEN/WATCH
- Live at the Olympia (Wow!): LISTEN/WATCH



Photographs via and via and via and via and via

Pantone

In her project "Humanae", Brazilian photographer Angélica Dass creates a catalogue of skin tones by matching 11x11 pixel swatches from posing volunteers' faces witch Pantone colours. The project has no limits as every volunteer is welcome to participate no matter which age, gender, ethnicity, religion, or social class. And there is no time limit either, no deadline by which the project has to be finished (via).



Here is a part of the feature shot interview with the photographer (via):

What was your inspiration for using Pantone colors to represent humans? 
“If what I wanted was to destroy the concepts of colors associated with race, such as red, yellow, white and black, it would not be logical to use a color scale that works with percentages of these colors. That’s why I chose not to use CMYK or RGB. Pantone works on a neutral scale, where a color has no more importance than another. It’s a very identifiable scale for those in the world of design, but also easily understood by anyone. It provides a way to look objectively at the ‘human object.'”



How do you go about finding subjects for your work and what are the criteria you are looking for? 
“There is no selection criteria. I make public announcements through social networks. To ensure diversity in the project, I work at spaces that are not only in the art world, too. The 2000 images in the project have been made in galleries and art fairs, but also in urban favelas, in NGOs, at the headquarters of UNESCO, and in cooperatives that work with the homeless.
“Not only are there a mix of faces and colors, but a mix of social classes, religions, sexual orientations, political elections, economic status—together in Humanae we cannot be confined to these codes. So far I have taken portraits in seven cities: Madrid, Barcelona, Winterthur, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Paris, and Chicago. My minimum goal is to make portraits on all the five continents.”



By identifying your subjects by Pantone color rather than ethnicity/color of origin/name/occupation, etc., what commentary do you hope to make about their identities and the relationship between them? 
“It is a kind of game for subverting our codes. The ultimate goal is to provoke discussion about ethnic identity, creating images that lead us to identify each other independent from factors such as nationality, origin, economic status, age, or aesthetic standards. The most important thing for me is the dialogue Humanae has generated outside of the existing conversation. For example, Humanae has been used in educational textbooks by teachers who use it as a tool to talk about equality, appropriation for new artists who are interested in the physiognomic variety in the project, or scientists who use it to illustrate their research.”



"A photographic taxonomy of these proportions has been rarely undertaken; those who preceded Angélica Dass were characters of the 19th century that, for various reasons - legal, medical, administrative, or anthropological - used photographs to establish different types of social control of the power. The best-known is that of the portraits of identity, initiated by Alphonse Bertillon and now used universally. However, this taxonomy close to Borges´ world, adopts the format of the PANTONE ® guides, which gives the collection a degree of hierarchical horizontality that dilutes the false preeminence of some races over others based on skin color or social condition."
Alejandro Castellote



photographs via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via

Clear as Black

“By looking at me you will not know what I am. I am white, but I am black. Slowly the personal side of this story kept gnawing at me more and more, and before I knew it this project was totally about me. Through this series, I discovered who I am genetically,”
Adriana Monsalve



Worldwide, Puerto Rico has the highest prevalence of albinism and Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome (a type of albinism with a bleeding tendency and lung disease that has also been studied most frequently among Puerto Ricans, observed in five of every six albinos in Puerto Rico). Not all people diagnosed with albinism show the "typical" and distinguishing traits such as light hair, skin and eyes.



“I came up with ‘Clear As Black’ because I felt it represented exactly what it was that I had been seeing for three months in Puerto Rico: white people that are black, and black people that are white and all the visual representations of that. In the same way, ‘Clear As Black,’ is telling about me.”
Adriana Monsalve



With her series "Clear As Black", Adriana Monsalve confronts her own "story of being classified based on looks" and aims to break away "from the narrative of seeing persons with albinism as 'other'".



“I wanted to highlighted (sic.) the fact that they are people before they are ‘albinos.’ They are people with a condition called albinism and they live interesting lives just like you and me, full of layers and puberty, and racism and prejudice and romance and academic achievements and religious views and break-ups and lust an family drama and everything that makes them a whole person.”
Adriana Monsalve



“I’ve always found the rule in photography about how you should not mix color photos with black and whites in a series to be silly. My story has so much to do with skin color and lack [thereof], so I am going at against that rule for my benefit and the benefit of the story.”
Adriana Monsalve



“That’s what this series is about: changing what the word ‘albino’ means, and ultimately taking it out of our lexicon. I am showing a broader more expansive narrative of what people with albinism look like.”
Adriana Monsalve



- photographs and information via
- Witkop et al., (1990). Albinism and Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome in Puerto Rico. Boletín de la Asociación Medica de Puerto Rico, 82(8), 333-339

"Your Skin Color Shouldn't Dictate Your Future"

In 2010, the Ligue Internationale Contre le Racisme e l'Antisémitisme (LICRA) worked with Publicis Conseil Paris on the campaign "Your Skin Color Shouldn't Dictate Your Future" which won an award at the 2010 Cresta Awards (via).



The Construction Worker, The Cleaning Lady and The Garbage Man: Exaggerated clichees? According to the U.S. Department of Labor, compared with "Whites", "Blacks" are twice as likely to be unemployed. Studies conducted by the Fair Employment Council show that Black applicants are treated less favourably (Harrison & Thomas, 2009). In the U.S., immigrants with the lightest skin colour earn on average 17% more than those with the darkest skin colour. In fact, moving from the 10th percentile to the 90th of the skin colour distribution reduces wages by about 8% (Hersch, 2008). An examination of the U.S. Latino population shows that those who describe themselves as White on Census 2000 have more economic power and the highest incomes although Black Hispanics are better-educated (via). In Brazil, Afro-Brazilians are paid on average 40% less than "White" Brazilians (via). These are a few examples, the list could be continued most easily. And it is not just the professional life that is dictated by skin tone. According to a study by Viglione et al. (2011), Black women with lighter skin tone receive more lenient prison sentences and serve less time in prison than those with darker skin tone (via).



Advertising Agency: Publicis Conseil, Paris, France
Creative Director: Olivier Altmann
Copywriter:Fabrice Dubois
Art Director: Pascale Gayraud
Account Manager: Gaelle Morvan
Account Supervisor: Gaelle Morvan
Advertisers Supervisor: Pierre Fournel
Photographer: Yann Robert (via)



- Harrison, M. S. & Thomas, K. A. (2009) The Hidden Prejudice in Selection: A Research Investigation on Skin Color Bias. Journal of Applied Social Psycholog, 39, 134-168.
- Hersch, J. (2008) Profiling the New Immigrant Worker: The Effects of Skin Color and Height. Journal of Labor Economics, 26(2), 345-386
- photos via

Educated Light Skin & Ignorant Dark Skin? Stereotypes And Skin Tone Bias

Skin tone bias, a phenomenon that is prevalent among different ethnicities, is the tendency to judge people based on their skin tone lightness or darkness. And usually the tendency is, the darker, the more negative the stereotypes and the discrimination that are associated (e.g. longer prison sentences). Not every individual easily fits into the artificial and simplified black-white categories. The black-white dichotomy, the construction of two poles, shows its flexible and arbitrary approach when, for instance, black-white ambiguous faces are to be categorised: Ambiguous faces that are categorised as white are perceived as being lighter.


The first day of desegregation at Fort Myer Elementary School in Fort Myer, VA on 8 September 1954

In their study, Ben-Zeev et al. (2014) investigated the link between stereotypic (i.e. expectancy-congruent) priming vs. counter-stereotypic (i.e. expectency-violating) priming and (mis)remembering a person's skin tone. The researchers used an unambiguous black male target face. Participants were either primed with a stereotypic word ("ignorant", "athletic") or a counter-stereotypic word ("educated"). The subliminal prime was immediately followed by the unambiguous black man's face. Afterwards, participants completed a recognition task. The authors proceeded on the assumption that the counter-stereotypic word "educated" would lead to whitening of the face in memory and assimilate the information to the stereotype while the word "ignorant" would not lead to any distortions since it is congruent with societal expectations.


In 1959, Prince Edward County Schools decided to close all schools, so they did not have to desegregate. No public school was open for five years. Meanwhile the "white" community opened a private school where all the "white" students went to (via).

So what happens when the words "ignorant", "educated" or "athletic" are presented in 40-point Helvetica for 30 ms followed by seven different skin tone variations of a black man's face? One result of the study suggests that a counter-stereotypic (i.e. educated) black male is likely to be remembered as "whiter" which supports the skin tone memory bias. This tendency is explained with "the mind's striving for cognitive consistency" and "the attempt to resolve an incompatible cognition". In other words, an educated black male challenges the sterotypic-driven mind.


School segregation protest

Ben-Zeev, A., Dennehy, T. C., Goodrich, R. I., Kolarik, B. S. & Geisler, M. W. (2014). When an "Educated" Black Man Becomes Lighter in the Mind's Eye: Evidence for a Skin Tone Memory Bias. SAGE Open, January-March, 1-9.
Photos via and via and via

The -ism Series (9): Jospehine Baker and Colourism

Freda Jospehine McDonald (1906-1975), also known as Josephine Baker, the "Black Pearl", "Bronze Venus" or "Creole Goddess" was the first African-American woman to star in a major film (Zouzou in 1934) and to become an internationally popular entertainer. In the 1920s, she became the most highly paid chorus girl, in 1931, she scored the most successful song (J'ai deux amours).
She was popular in France. In the US she was rejected. Time magazine called her a "Negro wench".  In New York, she was refused reservations at 36 hotels because of her skin colour. The Ku Klux Klan threatened her. In 1951, the famous situation occurred where Baker was refused service in the Stork Club in Manhattan and Grace Kelly rushed over to her and said she would never enter the club again. Baker gave up her US-American citizenship (via).

To be beautiful, you must take plenty of fresh air and light, but not too much sunshine ... I use milk as well, as a lotion, it keeps me lighter.
Josephine Baker (via Jules-Rosette, 2007)

In the US, lighter skin was more likely to be accepted whereas in Europe, darker skin represented (the European construct) of "true black spirit". Baker "dictated fashion and social life trends in Paris" (Sowinska, 2006). Her popularity in France boosted sales of "Bakerfix" hair gel and "Bakerskin" darkening lotion - Parisian women wanted to look like her. Baker herself, on the other hand, lightened her skin with lemon rubs (via) and publicly promoted her skin-lightening formula (Jules-Rosette, 2007).
During the slave days, African Americans had developed their own class systems based on skin tone. Dark-skinned individuals with kinky, "bad" hair were sent to the cotton fields while the light-skinned ones with wavy, "good" hair worked inside. In the early twentieth century, Madame C. J. Walker's beauty creams contained hydroquinone which bleached the skin. Blacks seemed to have finally internalised the beauty standards of white America (Singer, 2005).

Josephine Baker supported the Civil Rights Movement, worked with the civil rights organisation National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, spoke at the March on Washington and refused to perform for segregated audiences no matter how much money she was offered (via). She actively fought for civil rights and was nevertheless not immune to the Bleaching Syndrome, an assimilation practice which is historically rooted in the African American creams and folk preparations to lighten the skin colour and by doing so removing "blackness" and turning "white". The origin, however, is the "imposition of Western somatic light skin ideals upon social environments" (Hall, 2010). Skin colour is more than the obvious. It is about a specific status in society, And changing skin colour is probably more about changing the very status in society than changing the obvious.

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- Hall, R. E. (2010) The Bleaching Syndrome in the Context of Somatic Norm Image Among Women of Color: A Qualitative Analysis of Skin Color. European Journal of Social Sciences, 17(2), 180.185
- Jules-Rosette, B. (2007) Josephine Baker in art and life. The icon and the image.
- Singer, A. J. (2005) Stepping Out in Cincinnati: Queen City Entertainment 1900-1960. Charleston et al.: Arcadia Publishing
- Sowinska, A. (2006) Dialectics of the Banana Skirt: The Ambiguities of Josephine Baker's Self-Representation. Michigan Feminist Studies (via)
- animated gif via,

Nina Simone

Nina Simone (1933-2003), one time Grammy Hall of Fame Award winner and fifteen times nominee, became involved in the civil rights movement in the early 1960s. Civil rights messages became an integral part of her songs - the first time with "Mississippi Goddam", a song that was boycotted in some southern states, (via) a song she had written in response to the assassination of the civil rights activist Medgar Evers (1925-1963) and the Birmingham church bombing in 1963 (via).



Recently, her biography - or rather the casting decision for the film "Nina" - caused some controversy. The Afro-Latina actress of Dominican and Puerto Rican descent Zoe Saldana was chosen to play Nina Simone. Some criticised the fact that Saldana would barely resemble Simone (via), that Hollywood would "whitewash and lightwash" and choose what media considers blackness to be. An online petition followed to change the cast and replace Saldana (via). The petition was signed by more than 10.000 people (via). When photos of Zoe Saldana were published wearing an afro wig and darker makeup in order to resemble Simone and to be able to play her role, accusations of blackface and parody followed (via).
Nina Simone's daughter: "My mother was raised at a time when she was told her nose was too wide, her skin was too dark. Appearance-wise this is not the best choice." (via)

Follow-Up: The Diversity Coalition & The Fashion Industry

The discussion about a possible link between fashion and racism is not a completely new one. Five years ago, Vogue published an article titled "Is Fashion Racist?". The magazine sold out overnight (via). Bethann Hardison, supermodel of the 1970s, activist, founder and spokeswoman of the Diversity Coalition, recently drew attention to the Fashion Week. In an open letter to e.g. the Council of Fashion Designers of America (via) she named fifty fashion houses that used "one or no model of color" (via).

"No matter the intention, the result is racism," it read. "Not accepting another based on the color of their skin is clearly beyond aesthetic when it is consistent with the designer's brand. Whether it's the decision of the designer, stylist or casting director, that decision to use basically all white models reveals a trait that is unbecoming to modern society. It can no longer be accepted, nor confused by the use of the Asian model." (via)

According to Jezebel, 80% of the models at the New York Fashion Show were "white", the remaining 20% were "black, Asian and Latina" (via); 6% of the models appearing in February's Fashion Week were black (via).



Donyale Luna (1945-1979), the first African American model on the cover of British Vogue, via and via



In her letter, Hardison pointed out that designers were trying to get around diversity by using Asian models who were closer to "white". In an interview, she stated that the prospects for black models used to be better in the past (via). Hardison appeared on ABC with Iman and Naomi Campbell who both actively support the Diversity Coalition (via), other models such as Jessica White joined the chorus of criticism concerning a lack of diversity. Apparently, there have also been positive reactions to the letter. Good news, as fashion is about creating trends that are often not limited to clothes ...

The Paper Bag

The so called "paper bag parties" required people to pass the "brown paper bag test" in order to be admitted. If you were lighter than a brown paper bag, you could go to the party. Since women could attempt to lighten their skin with make-up, the bag was usually placed against an exposed arm. However, not all paper bag parties had visible paper bags. And, although the practice is universally condemned, there is still the notion that the ideals behind the practice survived. In 1982, Alice Walker coined the term "colourism" which refers to the form of discrimination that is based on social values that are associated with skin colour.

 

- Kerr, A. E. (2006) The Paper Bag Principle: Class, Colorism, and Rumor and the Case of Black Washington. University of Tennessee Press
- photo via

The Paper Bag Test

The so called "paper bag parties" required people to pass the "brown paper bag test" in order to be admitted. If you were lighter than a brown paper bag, you could go to the party. Since women could attempt to lighten their skin with make-up, the bag was usually placed against an exposed arm. However, not all paper bag parties had visible paper bags. And, although the practice is universally condemned, there is still the notion that the ideals behind the practice survived. In 1982, Alice Walker coined the term "colourism" which refers to the form of discrimination that is based on social values that are associated with skin colour.



- Kerr, A. E. (2006) The Paper Bag Principle: Class, Colorism, and Rumor and the Case of Black Washington. University of Tennessee Press
- photograph taken by Inge Morath (Saul Steinberg, "The Mask Series") via

Update 2017: Photograph has been changed

Black is Beautiful

In the 1960s, African Americans started the movement "Black is Beautiful" which later became an international one. Its aim was to counteract the idea and ideal of "white" features setting beauty standards which in other words meant that "black" features were contradictory to beauty. Among other practices, this movement also encouraged people to stop eliminating their "visible Africanness" by e.g. straightening their hair or bleaching their skin. (photo via)



Black dolls manufactured in 1968 to celebrate the "Black is Beautiful" movement (photo via)