Colourism

As part of the legacy of European colonial rule and systems of white supremacy, colourism is a significant socio-economic and healthcare issue in communities of colour across the globe. This form of intra-racial discrimination was established by colonialism’s rigid social and racial hierarchies and nowadays, colourism is evident in the privileging of lighter-skinned people of colour over their darker-skinned counterparts in the areas of education, employment and income, healthcare, social interactions, marriage markets, beauty standards, the media, and criminal justice systems, to name a few examples. Moreover, colourism is considered a gendered phenomenon as women and more specifically, women of colour, are disproportionately expected to adhere to Eurocentric beauty standards and colonial aesthetics. The yearning for a whiter or lighter skin tone amongst women of colour is not necessarily a question of vanity but rather, it is a means to purchase social and racial capital and to achieve the upward social and economic mobility from which they are systematically excluded. Colourism remains rampant in post-colonial Africa as African women engage in various skin-lightening practices - even at the risk of experiencing chemical burns, liver and kidney damage (and failure), mercury poisoning, and several other health risks.