Topher Sanders writes about a new study that confirms that skin tone can affect how harshly black women are punished for a crime:
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.
This is one of those things that everyone intuitively "knows" but that few people really talk about, in part because racism is already a big enough problem. But colorism doesn't just impact the length of a potential prison sentence, it also might keep you from getting a job. Being black and light skinned gives one an advantage in seeking employment over darker skinned black people, all things being equal, though not as great an advantage as being white.
The other reason people don't talk about this, though, is that it's very old and black people are already very aware of it. From the house slave/field slave dichotomy to the "paper bag test," the social advantages of light skin have been with us from the beginning. That social stratification produced by colorism has perpetuated itself over the years, of course, and I suspect that another one of the reasons people don't talk about it is that many of those in a position make themselves heard would frankly rather not.
