Writer Dream McClinton recently wrote a column in the Guardian pondering “why dark-skinned Black girls like me aren’t getting married.”
Black women in America marry less than others and the numbers are even lower for darker skinned Black women. Could colorism be the reason?
Some experts think so.
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Colorism and the reasons for it have been studied. “It’s typical to see light-skinned Black women as representing beauty in the Black community and therefore being highly desirable for high-status spouses,” says Dr. Margaret Hunter, who teaches sociology at Oakland’s Mills College and who has studied the relationship between marriage and
What exactly is colorism and has it affect the love lives of darker-skinned women? “Colorism – the prejudice based on skin tone – has stunted the romantic lives of millions of dark-skinned Black women, including me. We are not as valued as our lighter-skinned counterparts when seeking romantic partners, our dating pool constricted because of something as arbitrary as shoe size,” McClinton wrote.
American colorism can be traced back to slavery. It’s part of American history when slave masters raped enslaved women. Their lighter-skinned illegitimate offspring were often given preferential treatment over the darker slaved. Lighter-skinned slaves many times got to work in the house, while the others worked the fields outdoors. This preference based on skin tone was internalized by Black people and remains part of life today.
“Dark skin still not only comes with the expectation of lower class but lessened beauty, not to mention uncleanliness, lesser intelligence and a diminished attractiveness. Meanwhile, everywhere we look, women like me see successful Black men coupled with fair-skinned female partners who pass the paper bag test – a remnant of the Reconstruction era, where the only Black people worthy of attention had to be lighter than a paper bag. This ‘test’ was even instituted in places such as historically Black colleges and universities as an informal part of the admissions process,” McClinton wrote.
Among “high-status” husbands (those with higher levels of education who didn’t grow up on public assistance and /or come from lower-crime neighborhoods), 55 percent marry light-skinned women while 23 percent marry dark-skinned women, according to research from Dr. Darrick Hamilton, a professor of economics and sociology at Ohio State University.
Others studies have found similar evidence. In one study, economists looked at how dark skin has been associated with being poor, evil, or ugly and how this impacts relationships.
“To break it down, the study revealed that light-skinned women were viewed as more desirable and attractive than darker-skinned sisters. To take this dysfunction even further, whenever there appears to be a shortage of marriage-minded Black men, these men are then seen as highly valuable and can ‘leverage’ the fact that they are in demand by choosing the more desirable women in the dating scene. In other words, when the brothers know that women are competing for their attention, they feel that they can be more selective. And the study showed these men often separated women by skin tone first and foremost,” Black And Married With Children reported.
