i've never felt discriminated against because of my skin and that is not the same story for my brother colorism is a larger structure of inequality based on skin tone it is directly related to institutional racism it can't exist without institutional racism but colorism is a way of describing how people experience racism based on skin tone so colorism works on a spectrum the wider or the closer to what you are right the more access the more privileges you will have and vice versa the darker you are the less privileges and the more difficulties you will encounter studying colorism and understanding it more deeply is really important because we can't fully understand racism without also understanding colorism and how it operates you'll often hear people use the term white passing especially in the past few years as a way of talking about people who may identify as people of color but phenotypically could pass as white doesn't necessarily mean they want to pass as white but other people may perceive them as white it is important to make the distinction between families from latin america who are in fact white families european of european ancestry who never mixed so in that case those people are actually not white passing they're just white latin american folk race is a social construction but they are construed as white and they you know often claim european ancestry right researchers study colorism across many different groups and what they find consistently are significant differences in either overall earnings or overall educational attainment between lighter skinned people and darker skinned people of the same group even when all the other things about them are held constant so i grew up with my brother who i mean we grew up in the same household same parent same blood but because he is several shades darker than me people used to come up to us and ask if we were adopted more specifically is he adopted he would get bullied for the color of his skin be called all of these derogatory names and although my parents had reassured him that his skin is beautiful brown is beautiful you know i could tell that these comments that his peers are saying to him created this inner turmoil i've never felt discriminated against because of my skin and that is not the same story for my brother even though lighter-skinned people benefit from colorism across most racial groups many of them don't perceive that to be true and when interviewed many lighter-skinned people of color latinx people included will say well the most racism i have ever faced is from people of my own group so some people will say oh you know i look white and everybody assumes i'm white and i feel you know violated because i don't want them to think i'm white i want them to think i'm puerto rican or i'm peruvian or lighter skinned people are told oh you're not really mexican or oh you know you're blind i thought you were white i didn't think you were salvador in you so those kinds of experiences often make lighter skin people feel sort of ostracized from their group and those can have strong emotional responses from people those are important and we do need to understand them but they aren't the same that isn't the same as experiencing colorism if you're a dark skinned person people in your group might put you down for being lighter skinned or tell you you're not really an authentic or legitimate member of the group but you're still going to experience advantages in terms of income housing education etc so being able to hold both of those realities at once is really important to understanding colorists privileges of the proximity to whiteness uh among ex people is right safety from harassment my brother he would get bullied for the color of his skin be called all of these derogatory names harassment by the state you know the police law enforcement fbi in arizona there was sb 1070 where it was legal for police to stop you on the street pull you over for the color of your skin to check your papers i wouldn't get pulled over we were terrified that my brother or my dad would be pulled over because of the way they look you're assumed to have good intentions often that you're a reliable person whether you are or not doesn't matter right but the assumption that comes with your your skin color your skin tone right your whiteness these toes these assumptions upon you right whether you want them or not i was born and raised in monterrey mexico which is a very white very wealthy part of mexico historically light skin has given a lot of advantages to members of the latinx community in particular you can think about beauty standards growing up here had a lot of pros but also because of the environment everyone looks european and blonde i grew up thinking that that was the standard of beauty and i always wished that i was blonde and i always wished that i had blue eyes one of my sisters blonde and has blue eyes so i always grew up thinking that i wasn't pretty historically lighter skinned women in particular were seen as more beautiful and therefore able to marry higher status spouses that was the aspiration marry someone whiter than you blonder than you in addition lighter skin has enabled many latinx people to move higher in their careers if they are perceived as less different and less threatening to whites media is a huge contributor to colorism and to discrimination in mexico and i'm sure in other latinx countries because what you see in the media gets normalized and that's what people think is a reflection of the world i worked in telenovelas in mexico city i was the darkest one of my family my mom is fully white my dad is a little more moreno we say and because of the way that i look i would always play the poor characters or the help and then you have the white actors that are the rich ones lots of research shows consistent findings that lighter skin people are perceived as smarter as more attractive as more kind and a whole host of other positive traits we call this a halo effect of light skin or a halo effect of beauty i was the darkest or one of the darkest actors that you would ever see and that's the problem i i think all of us obviously have an obligation to work against racism and colorism and lighter skinned people often have it may have an easier time naming it when they see it that's one of the obligations or responsibilities of having privilege in any kind of social system i acknowledge now that i've always had privilege i had wealth privilege in mexico i had light-skinned privilege so i think it's important the ones that have the privilege to use it to balance the skills a little bit correct or stand up when you witness racism and injustice right so don't sit there quietly actually say something sometimes that might be in family dynamics and it can be hard to say to your auntie or your uncle actually when you say that about my new baby it makes it seem like she's only beautiful because she's light but really she's beautiful just because she is if i could give any advice for like siblings who have a similar situation like be there for your sibling talk to them about these things have an open dialogue like my brother and i are barely talking about these things now we never really talked about it ourselves growing up just be there for them and stick up for them the fight to eradicate anti-black racism it's a fight that that requires that we be brave right it isn't something that rewards the meek right movements are made of of a lot of little people speaking up right we don't have to be big people we don't have to be you know pioneers of movement we could be a small person who speaks up and a lot of small people who speak up really make big changes like