Race Gender & Politics Skin Tone

by Margaret L. Hunter

Race, Gender, and the Politics of Skin Tone tackles the hidden yet painful issue of colorism in the African American and Mexican American communities. Beginning with a historical discussion of slavery and colonization in the Americas, the book quickly moves forward to a contemporary analysis of how skin tone continues to plague people of color today. This is the first book to explore this well-known, yet rarely discussed phenomenon.

Genres: Research

160 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2005

Reviews

[Rowena · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars, I think. Interesting book to read. It included a lot of things I already knew about colourism. Even so, it was quite a depressing read, depressing because people still buy into the eurocentric view of beauty and not only spend a lot of money to change their features (surgeries, etc) but also instil lies about superiority and inferiority into their children and those around them.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is perfectly adequate for covering the subject—that even among blacks and Latinos, lighter skin is considered sexier and superior—but despite lots of statistics and quotes, that's about all Hunter has to say and it's not anything new (and I'm hardly an in-depth researcher). This would have been just as informative as a magazine article.

[Kelly Palakshappa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book discusses racism gender and discusses racism among African Americans and Mexican Americans equally. It discusses how lighter-skinned African American and Mexican Americans have more privileges compared to their darker-skinned counterparts. Throughout the book, Hunter goes into great detail about the advantages of light skin color and the status of light-skinned women in the dating and marriage market. The book goes into detail about white supremacy and the view that dark skin represents savagery, irrationality, ugliness and inferiority, whereas, white skin, according to the book, signifies civility, rationality, beauty and superiority. Hunter then goes into how these notions of race are infused into our cultural today through thoughts and perspectives. The book explores how slavery and colonialism created systems of racism that are still alive today. One example is Hunter’s explanation of the Rule of Hypodescent. When this rule was first instated, anyone with “one drop of black blood” was considered legally black. This rule identified blacks by a broadly defined term and created more enslavable people. After slavery was abolished, this rule was maintained by whites to decrease the competition for scarce resources and shut blacks out of the political process.

In terms of Mexican Americans, Hunter examines the historical context of skin color differentiation and stratification in association with the American ideology of Manifest Destiny and the barbaric acts bestowed against indigenous peoples which gave white colonists superiority.

The book uses different methodologies to get the information across including: national surveys, cultural criticism and personal interview. The goal of Hunter’s while writing this book was to produce knowledge for social change and understand the postmodernist theory that there is no one grand narrative that can explain all of social life for all people.

[Habeeb Akande · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this book