Discrimination or prejudice based on skin tone, where lighter skin is often favored over darker skin within a racial or ethnic group.
From 'color' (Latin 'color') + '-ism' (suffix denoting a system or practice). The term emerged in the late 20th century to describe intra-racial discrimination patterns observed across many cultures.
Colorism reveals how colonialism didn't just divide people by race—it created hierarchies within racial groups by making lighter skin seem superior, a legacy still affecting beauty standards, hiring, and dating in many countries today.
Colorism—discrimination based on skin tone—intersects heavily with gendered beauty standards, particularly for women of color. Women face sharper colorism penalties in employment, media, and marriage markets, making the bias explicitly gendered in its enforcement and consequences.
Use term as-is; it's scientifically neutral. When discussing impacts, specify gendered patterns: 'colorism affects women of color more severely in hiring and beauty industries.'
Black feminist scholars and women of color activists (Kimberlé Crenshaw, Marita Golden, others) theorized and named colorism's gendered dimensions, centering women's lived experience of intersecting racism and sexism.
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