Skin colour words and colourism: explained simply

Colourism is the unequal treatment of people according to how light or dark their skin is, often among people of the same ethnic group or family. It is distinct from racism, though tangled with it. It affects marriage, work and self-regard in South Asia, Africa, East Asia, Latin America and elsewhere. It shows plainly in language, where words for light skin double as words of praise.

Pigmentation in ancient Egypt — Photo: Notradeuussrs, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

A named prejudice

The American writer Alice Walker is credited with bringing the word colourism into print in 1983. The thing itself is much older. Its sources differ by place and are debated: preferences linked to class, since outdoor labourers were darker, hierarchies of caste and region, and the heavy weight of slavery and colonial rule, which tied lightness to power. Research in several countries has found lighter-skinned people favoured in hiring, pay, sentencing and marriage. Media and advertising repeat the pattern through who is cast as beautiful or successful.

Words

Language keeps the bias going. In English, fair means both pale and beautiful, and also just. In Hindi, gora, saanwla and kala describe a range from light to dark, and matrimonial advertisements long specified fair or used the coinage wheatish. Many languages have similar scales. Naming products after one skin tone is another form: crayons, plasters and tights sold as flesh or nude assumed a pale customer. A leading American crayon maker renamed its flesh crayon peach in 1962, and broad ranges of skin-tone colours are now common in make-up and stationery.

Harm and change

Skin-lightening creams are a large market in Asia and Africa. Some contain mercury, steroids or hydroquinone and cause lasting damage to skin and kidneys. The World Health Organization warns against mercury in such products, and several African countries, Rwanda and Ghana among them, restrict them. In India, the Dark is Beautiful campaign began in 2009, and in 2020 the country's best-known fairness cream dropped the word fair from its name after years of criticism. Campaigners point out that a new name does not change what a product promises. Attitudes are shifting slowly.

Sources and further reading

About this page

Original text by the Rang desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Meanings of colour vary from place to place and person to person. If we have something wrong, tell us.