Colorism: The Prejudice We Don’t Talk About

by Dr. Robert L. Reece, PhD

“None but the yellow shall see God.”

That’s the hymn that the Colored Methodist Episcopal (CME) church (now the “Christian Methodist Church) sang to a dark skinned woman who wandered into their congregation in the 1880s.

The woman hurried into the church late wearing a bandana around her head and an apron. She settled in a front row pew as she tried to catch her breath. Although her tardiness interrupted the sermon, the parishioners weren’t offended by that. They were offended that this humble dark-skinned woman even had the audacity to be in their church. After all, they had specifically named their church the Colored Methodist Episcopal church to separate themselves from the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church because they, light skinned and multiracial as they were, did not consider themselves “African.”

The hymn began slowly at first, but it soon grew into a loud chorus of unified voices reminding the woman that not only did she not belong in this church but she did not belong in heaven because she was dark skinned.

The story ends there. I’ve read it recounted numerous times with no mention of what happened to the poor woman. I imagine she fled the church and sought to worship elsewhere. Or maybe her faith was so strong that she endured the ridicule to remain in God’s house. Regardless, I’ve always been struck by the fact that the entire congregation immediately knew the words to this song. How many times had they gleefully sang this hymn among themselves, satisfied with the knowledge that they would see God’s face while their dark-skinned counterparts would be left behind?

Further north in Washington, D.C, multiracial Black Americans—mulattos in the language of the day—erected strict boundaries between themselves and the dark skinned. The popular Lotus Club did not admit non-mixed black people, and they even sought to distinguish between mulattos who were free before the Civil War and those who were not. Similarly, the Cosmos Club, home to elite mulatto academics and scientists, excluded non-mixed black people and darker mulattos.

Scenes like this speak to a time when colorism ran rampant in the open in Black America, when segregation not only meant white people separating themselves from black people, it also meant light skinned black people separating themselves from their darker kin.

Skin tone ruled the day.

Roughly 150 years later, we look around at a different society. The paper bag test—where prospective members were forced to measure their skin tone against a paper bag to see if they were light enough to participate in the club or event—the blue vein test—where mulattos sought to associate themselves with people who were so light that their veins were visible through their skin—and ruler test—where acceptance depended on a person’s hair being straight as a ruler—have all seemingly fallen by the wayside. Unfortunately, the underlying logic that facilitated colorism in the past remains with us. It may be subtler and quieter, but colorism remains as sinister as ever.

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We are all victims of our one-drop-rule legacy. After the Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v Ferguson stated that “The power to assign a particular coach obviously implies the power to determine to which race the passenger belongs, as well as the power to determine who, under the laws of the particular states, is to be deemed a white, and who a colored person” states around the country pounced on the opportunity to define blackness more fervently than they ever had before. In the following decades, laws emerged that sought to delineate who was black, and thus subject to Jim Crow segregation, and was who not, and thus free. Some states declared one-fourth black ancestry made a person black; some said one-eighth; and yet others said any black ancestry—“one drop” of black blood—made a person black.

Those laws clarified who was governed by Jim Crow laws, the question Plessy v. Ferguson sought to answer. They said that even light-skinned mulattos were simply “black” under the law, just as black as the woman they not-so-subtly tried to expel from the CME church. Over time we accepted that as the new normal and forgot, or pretended to forget, that there was a time when color differences were formal, highlighted, and celebrated.

Our collective memories began to fade as early as the 1920s. WEB DuBois remains one of the most prominent Black American activists and scholars in United States history. He pioneered sociological data collection and advanced schools of thought about inequality that remain present in modern scholarship. But colorism was one of his biggest blind spots.

Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey, who certain had his own share of political blind spots, was a fierce opponent of colorism from the moment he arrived in the United States. This position put him in direct opposition to DuBois, who maintained that colorism did not exist and had never existed among Black Americans. In 1921 DuBois wrote:

…there is no doubt but what Garvey has sought to import to America and capitalize the antagonism between blacks and mulattos in the West Indies. This has been the cause of the West Indian failures to gain headway against the whites. Yet Garvey imports it into a land where it has never had any substantial foisting and where today, of all day, it is absolutely repudiated by every thinking Negro; Garvey capitalizes it, has sought to get the cooperation of men like R.R. Motin on this basis, and has aroused more bitter enmity inside the race than has ever before existed. The whites are delighted at the prospect of a division of our solidifying phalanx, but their homes are in vain. American Negroes recognize no color line in or out of the race, and they will in the end punish the man who attempts to establish it.

Not only was DuBois in denial, he was actively hostile to the idea that there had ever been colorism among his countrymen. In his eyes we were all just black, despite the fact that his 1916 “Who’s Who in Colored America” list included 132 mulattos out of the 139 people featured.

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Over 100 years after DuBois wrote those words (and a host of other mean-spirited remarks about Garvey) colorism still mimics his conception in much of the public consciousness. People yell and scream that “we’re all black!” while colorism continues unabated.

Sure, occasionally, discussions emerge in Hollywood. We remember the backlash to a Kanye call for women to be in a music video when he explicitly asked for light skinned women. Oprah produced the shallow documentary Dark Girls followed by the abominable Light Girls. But these conversations remain shallow, focused on beauty and attractiveness, dateability and Hollywood representation.

Colorism runs much, much deeper than that. It is almost ubiquitous, ever-present, snaking its way into the most obscure places, exacerbating inequalities, all while going relatively unchallenged.

Colorism shapes our economic outcomes. Even among siblings lighter skinned people earn more money.  It is so pernicious here that a number of studies show that skin tone is more important to shaping black people’s economic prospects than their parents’ economic and educational background. What’s more, a 2006 study showed that the average wages of light skinned black people were statistically indistinguishable from the average wages of white people.

Colorism shapes our health outcomes. Study after study shows that lighter skinned black people enjoy better mental and physical health outcomes, including lower rates of eating disorders, lower rates of hypertension, and lower overall mortality. But I want to highlight one study in particular. In 2019, Thomas Laidley and colleagues examined the connection between skin tone and health among groups of siblings. They found that darker skinned siblings suffered higher rates of hypertension that could not be accounted for with family background, home environment, physical activity, BMI, or even genetics! It could only be attributed to discrimination.

And, finally, colorism shapes criminal justice outcomes. Darker skinned people suffer considerably worse at the hands of the criminal justice system than their lighter counterparts. Darker skinned men are more likely to be arrested, again even among siblings in the same household. And a 2017 study by Jandel Crutchfield and colleagues showed that unarmed black men murdered by law enforcement were almost all dark skinned. But I think Traci Burch’s 2015 study provides the most damning examination of colorism in the criminal justice system. She conducted a two-stage study where she first analyzed the differences in criminal sentencing between black and white defendants. She found that black defendants received sentences that were about 4.25 percent longer than white defendants. However, when she analyzed differences based on skin tone she found that white people and light skinned black people received sentences that were roughly the same length, while medium and dark-skinned black people suffered sentences that were about 5.5 percent longer!

So where does this leave us? Honestly, I don’t know. In many ways combating racism is easier than colorism. Because our government bureaucracy has been constructed around race, racial inequality is an easier target. We can readily identify the policies and deep structural issues that fuel racism. Colorism is more slippery. Remember these inequalities are often happening between people in the same home! How do we fight that? I’m unsure.

But we cannot fight a problem that we are unaware of, and we cannot fight a problem if we do not understand the depths of its existence. So awareness is a good start. Awareness brings our collective cognitive capabilities to bear on a problem. We can pool our collective creativity and ingenuity to find ways to undermine an issue that has managed to rule our lives from the shadows. It is time to shine a light on the hidden colorist assaults on our lives and build power to stamp it out.

For a more detailed analysis of colorism and its history, look out for my upcoming book The Shades of Black Folk: Colorism Past, Present, and Future, available in the U.S. on February 8, 2026.

You can also check out our training Colorism and its Origins.