Question
What is Colorism?
Answer
One of the other traumas that we also frequently see is this idea of colorism, which occurs in minority populations of valuing some skin tones over others. For example, groups of individuals with darker or lighter skin or certain hair textures in certain cultures, that there's a likelihood that you will be safer, in more danger, picked on, or preferred over the other.
I worked with a set of twins in an African American family, where one of the children was much lighter skin than the other one. There were often comments from the biological mom about, "this is my white baby. Did you see my white baby?" They would often go back and forth, and say things to each other, about the color and tone of their skins, and that one was good, or one was bad as a result of that.
When we think about this piece of trauma, and that trauma in early childhood is also quite frequently marked by this real internalized sense that children have caused trauma. In that place of hearing those messages and seeing evidence of these things, then this becomes a real place of formation of identity. If I had been lighter, darker, had different hair, somehow spoke differently, then maybe all of these things would not have happened to me.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the webinar, The Role of Diversity in Work with Children in Child Welfare, presented by Alison Peak, MSW, LCSW, IMH-E.
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