Margaret Hunter

“If You're Light You're Alright” Light Skin Color as Social Capital for Women of Color

This article uses two national survey data sets to analyze the effects of skin color on life outcomes for African American and Mexican American women. Using a historical framework of European colonialism and slavery, this article explains how skin color hierarchies were established and are maintained. The concept of social capital is used to explain how beauty, defined through light skin, works as capital and as a stratifying agent for women on the dimensions of education, income, and spousal status. The analysis shows that light skin predicts higher educational attainment for both groups of women. Light skin directly predicts higher personal earnings for African American women and indirectly affects personal earnings for Mexican American women. Light skin predicts higher spousal status for African American women but not for Mexican American women.

What about the white women?: Racial politics in a women's studies classroom

This paper is an analysis of racial politics in a womens studies course. As instructors of a course entitled Women of Color, we experienced much resistance from students about the de-centering of whiteness in the curriculum. In this article, we use Ruth Frankenbergs concepts of whiteness, power evasiveness, and race consciousness to theorize the origins of and solutions to this resistance. Further, we describe how ideologies of colorblindness frame the discourse on race for most students, and how this limits their ability to move from a racial discourse of diversity to one of difference. We also offer suggestions about addressing this type of student resistance in the future

Latinos and the Skin Color Paradox

For African Americans and Latinos, skin color is a significant predictor of many social and economic stratification variables including income, education, housing, occupational status, spousal status, poverty rates, criminal justice sentencing, and rates of depression. Given these patterns, some scholars have surprisingly found that skin color is not a significant predictor of many political attitudes for African Americans, and called this phenomenon the “skin color paradox.” This article investigates the role of skin color, race, and national origin in predicting political marginality and political commonality among Latinos. The models suggest that skin color is not a significant predictor of political attitudes, consistent with the skin color paradox theory but that national origin does predict some political attitudes.

The Consequences of Colorism

Colorism is a form of discrimination based on skin tone that routinely privileges light-skinned people of color and penalizes darker-skinned people of color. Slavery in the USA and the Americas and European colonialism around the globe help explain the historical roots of colorism in the USA. Research on skin tone stratification demonstrates that, with few exceptions, light skin tone is privileged and rewarded in many different social settings. In fact, with increased access to racial capital and media technology, it is not unreasonable to suggest that skin tone is more important than ever.

The Cost of Color: What We Pay for Being Black and Brown

Most White Americans believe that racism is on the wane, and that any talk about racial discrimination does more harm than good. This phenomenon is referred to by many social scientists as colorblind racism. Among people of color, colorism, like racism, consists of both overt and covert actions, outright acts of discrimination and subtle cues of disfavor. Darker skin color is associated with more race-conscious views and higher levels of perceived discrimination. A rising number of discrimination cases based on skin tone have found their way to the courts. It is tempting to characterize the problem of colorism as equally difficult for both light-skinned people and dark. Dark-skinned people lack the social and economic capital that light skin provides, and are therefore disadvantaged in education, employment, and housing. Additionally, dark skin is generally not regarded as beautiful, so dark-skinned women often lose out in the dating and marriage markets. On the other side, light-skinned men and women are typically not regarded as legitimate members of the African American or Mexican American communities. Only a slow dismantling of the larger system of White racism, in the U.S. and around the globe, will initiate a change in the color hierarchy it has created.

Decentering the White and Male Standpoints in Race and Ethnicity Courses

Universities have increasingly become a site of contestation for issues regarding race, class, and gender. As more universities add a “diversity requirement” to their list of courses necessary for degree articulation, the politics surrounding these courses intensifies. Although it seems generally positive that universities offer more courses about racial and ethnic inequality, the way that many of these courses are organized is extremely problematic. The epistemological standpoint of the course is particularly important. From whose knowledge base is this course organized? I have found that many courses are organized from a white and male knowledge base. “Ethnic studies is grounded in an epistemological assumption of multiple standpoints that coalesce around socially constructed racial categories … and stand in opposition to whiteness.”1 Chun, Christopher, and Gumport argue for multiple perspectives in courses on racial inequality, particularly those that challenge white and male hegemonic notions of race and reality. Unfortunately, many courses do not challenge reified notions of race and reality, and some actually reinforce them.

Creating a Feminist Community on a Woman of Color Campus

This article examines the importance of centering the experiences of women of color in U.S. womens studies courses and the usefulness of this approach in building feminist solidarity among women of color students. Our observations are based on experiences as faculty members at a racially and ethnically diverse public university in the Los Angeles area. This campus is often described as being one of the most diverse universities in the United States. Thirty-one percent of the students are African American, 30 percent are Latino, 26 percent are white, 12 percent are Asian Pacific Islander, and less than i percent are Native American. In addition, a full 70 percent of the students are women. Drawing from observations in our classrooms and our reflections on the racial and gender politics of this unique university, this article describes our efforts to politicize students on a campus comprised primarily of women of color and the struggle to create a feminist community in that space. Our reflections are offered as a contribution to both old and new debates within feminist