The Gender of Colorism: Understanding the Intersection of Skin Tone and Gender Inequality

Abstract

Although researchers have made great strides in understanding colorism and skin tone stratification in the USA, important connections are still outstanding. One of these connections lies at the intersection of skin tone and gender stratification among black Americans, a place where researchers have certainly visited but work remains to be done. This manuscript builds on previous work to examine how gender and skin tone combine to influence black Americans' social outcomes. To that end, I leverage data from the National Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) and regression analysis to test the effect of skin tone and gender on black Americans' individual incomes. My results suggest a three-tiered hierarchy of income stratifica-tion. Light-skinned men sit atop this hierarchy with higher incomes than other black Americans after controlling for other relevant factors. Dark-skinned people suffer at the bottom of this hierarchy with lower incomes than the other gender and skin tone combinations (medium-skinned men, light-skinned women, and medium-skinned women).