Entry · catalog no. 1320
colorism
/ /ˈkʌlərɪzəm/ /KUH-luh-riz-um
noun · Eatonton, Georgia; the practice named is nationwide and older than the word · 1980s
✓ Verified
1.
Prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color — the preference for lighter skin, straighter hair and narrower features that slavery installed and that Black communities have carried and fought since.
“It is not racism when it comes from your own auntie. It is colorism, and it does its own kind of damage.”
2.
By extension, the industry practice of casting, hiring or promoting lighter-skinned Black people while treating darker-skinned Black people as less marketable.
“Look at the video. Every lead is two shades from the chorus. That is colorism with a budget.”
Origin & Attribution
Named by Alice Walker in In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens (1983), where she defined it as "prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color." The practice long predates the word: the plantation hierarchy that set house against field, the blue vein societies and brown paper bag tests of the Black middle class, the skin-bleach advertising that ran in Black newspapers for decades. Walker's contribution was to give Black people a name for a harm they had been living inside without a word for it, and to insist it be discussed openly rather than kept as family business.
1983
Alice Walker defines the word in In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens
1991
Spike Lee's School Daze-era debate over Wannabes and Jigaboos keeps the subject in public view
2011
Bill Duke's documentary Dark Girls films Black women testifying about it directly
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Eatonton, Georgia; the practice named is nationwide and older than the word · 1980s
Spoken by
Black writers, scholars and organizers; widely used in everyday Black conversation about family, casting and dating
$COLORIThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising43 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
78/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1983
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
book · 1983
■
Bill Duke and D. Channsin Berry, dirs., Dark Girls
documentary film · 2011
■
+ Cite a sourceSpike Lee, dir., School Daze, Columbia Pictures
film · 1988
See also