Racism in a "post-racial" society

Yesterday, The Root highlighted this story.

Villanova researchers studied more than 12,000 cases of African-American women imprisoned in North Carolina and found that women with lighter skin tones received more-lenient sentences and served less time than women with darker skin tones.

The researchers found that light-skinned women were sentenced to approximately 12 percent less time behind bars than their darker-skinned counterparts. Women with light skin also served 11 percent less time than darker women.

The study took into account the type of crimes the women committed and each woman's criminal history to generate apples-to-apples comparisons. The work builds on previous studies by Stanford University, the University of Colorado at Boulder and other institutions, which have examined how "black-looking" features and skin tone can impact black men in the criminal-justice arena.

The author tries to distinguish between "racism" and "colorism."

Racism gets all the headlines, but colorism is just as real and impacting, Hannon explains. How "white" someone is perceived matters. "Colorism is clearly not taken as seriously or is not publicly discussed as much as racism, and yet these effects are pretty strong and the evidence is pretty strong," he says. "It's a very real problem, and people need to pay attention to it more."

Part of me gets that point. I know that colorism is also an issue in the African American community. But what it all comes down to is that lighter is better than darker - which is the heart of racism. And when African Americans embrace that - I see internalized racism.

It all made me think of an amazing video produced by a talented young black woman Kiri Davis titled "A Girl Like Me." Take a look as young black women talk about the messages they're getting. And I'm sorry to say that you'll be discouraged when she re-creates the 1950's studies by Dr. Kenneth Clark asking for preference between a black doll and a white doll.



We will not be a truly "post-racial" society until these kinds of messages no longer permeate the air we all breathe.