Anti-black racism by blacks

An interesting form of racism:

We all know about racism, about whites discriminating against blacks. The prevelance of "colorism" — black on black discrimination, is less known, but it's an open secret in the black community.

Imagine this. You're asked to look at photos of faces and then give them a score of 1 to 5 to rate how smart you think the people in the photographs are. But there's a trick.

Mixed in with the 60 photos are pictures of the same person, but the photos are altered to make the person look darker skinned. Will that affect whether someone is rated smart? You bet.

There is still plenty of discrimination by skin color in this world, and in test after test like this one, the lighter-skinned people are perceived to be smarter, wealthier, even happier. It may surprise you that among those who rated differently, both whites and blacks give lower scores to people with darker skin. In our test, on average, the lighter faces were rated smarter.

While many blacks do not discriminate against each other by color this attitude is not unique. The fact that blacks often treat other blacks differently, based on the shade of their skin, is an open secret in the black community.

In the news:

Commentary: ‘Colorism’ is Alive and Well Among Color-Struck American Negroes

Around the Blogosphere:

Mellow Yellow

From: Anthony Browder (20/20 segment)

Colorism is real (Cases that prompted the 20/20 segment on Colorism)

COMMENTARY: Colorism

Colorism - Is this the rebirth of an old problem?

I'm about to get raw!