“If You Is White, You’s Alright. . . .” Stories About Colorism in America

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Law, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, United States on 2016-08-16 01:30Z by Steven

“If You Is White, You’s Alright. . . .” Stories About Colorism in America

Washington University Global Studies Law Review
Volume 14, Issue 4: Global Perspectives on Colorism (Symposium Edition) (2015)
pages 585-607

Kimberly Jade Norwood, Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law; Professor of African & African American Studies
Washington University School of Law, St. Louis, Missouri

Colorism, a term believed to be first coined in 1982 by Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker, was defined by her to mean the “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color.” It is not racism although there is a clear relationship. A clear example of racism would involve a business that refuses to hire black people. Colorism would not preclude the hiring of a black person, but there would be a preference for a black person with a lighter skin tone than a darker skinned person. From this example one can see too that colorism can not only occur within same-raced peoples but also across races. Colorism also is often gendered. Because of its unique relationship to who and what is beautiful, it has a tendency, although not exclusively, to affect and infect women more than men.

Although my first experience with colorism occurred very early in life, it never went away or otherwise resolved itself. Rather, it grew with me. And in many ways, I grew to understand that the color hierarchy was simply the way of the world. I would eventually marry and have children of my own. And through those children, I would again see colorism grow and sting. I knew that, some day, one day when I had time, I would spend time discussing, highlighting and helping to eradicate colorism. This paper offers some of my experiences with colorism and my continued growth in understanding its complexities.

Read the entire article here.

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Notwithstanding the Japanese government’s (constructive) postwar attempts to enforce equality for “mixed-blood children” at the Japanese elementary school level, the fact that “mixed-blood children” were officially categorized, “othered,” and singled out for differential treatment on an official level in fact invited more attention to the issue of blood in Japanese society.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2016-08-16 01:13Z by Steven

What [Robert] Fish overlooks is Japan’s policymaking process of embedding racism through “typifying race.” That is to say, how the acceptance and normalization of differentiation (i.e., the assumption that “mixed-blood children” are different because they look different) in fact legitimizes and systematizes racism (this is why scholars of racism generally do not use generic racialized categorizations such as “Black”, “White”, “Asian” etc. without proper problematization and contextualization). In fact, as argued earlier, the racialization process need not involve biological “race” at all: the act of differentiating, “othering,” and subordinating can be due to any physical marker that has a social stigma attached to it (e.g., hair textures, narrower eyes, cleft palates, skin blemishes). Notwithstanding the Japanese government’s (constructive) postwar attempts to enforce equality for “mixed-blood children” at the Japanese elementary school level, the fact that “mixed-blood children” were officially categorized, “othered,” and singled out for differential treatment on an official level in fact invited more attention to the issue of blood in Japanese society. In effect, especially in an atmosphere of impressionable youths like a schoolyard, this typification could in fact have created and reinforced mixed-bloodedness as a stigma, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that encouraged the very racialization that government policies were trying to avoid. Thus the sociology of racism itself should have been more fully problematized and discussed in Fish’s research.

Debito Arudou, “Japan’s Under-Researched Visible Minorities: Applying Critical Race Theory to Racialization Dynamics in a Non-White Society,” Washington University Global Studies Law Review, Volume 14, Issue 4: Global Perspectives on Colorism (Symposium Edition), 2015. 706. http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1552&context=law_globalstudies.

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Japan’s Under-Researched Visible Minorities: Applying Critical Race Theory to Racialization Dynamics in a Non-White Society

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, History, Law, Media Archive, Social Science on 2016-08-15 23:08Z by Steven

Japan’s Under-Researched Visible Minorities: Applying Critical Race Theory to Racialization Dynamics in a Non-White Society

Washington University Global Studies Law Review
Volume 14, Issue 4: Global Perspectives on Colorism (Symposium Edition) (2015)
pages 695-723

Debito Arudou

Critical Race Theory (CRT), an analytical framework grounded in American legal academia, uncovers power relationships between a racialized enfranchised majority and a disenfranchised minority. Although applied primarily to countries and societies with Caucasian majorities to analyze White Privilege this Article applies CRT to Japan, a non-White majority society. After discussing how scholarship on Japan has hitherto ignored a fundamental factor within racialization studies—the effects of skin color on the concept of “Japaneseness”—this Article examines an example of published research on the Post-WWIIkonketsuji problem.” This research finds blind spots in the analysis, and re-examines it through CRT to uncover more nuanced power dynamics. This exercise attempts to illustrate the universality of nation-state racialization processes, and advocates the expansion of Whiteness Studies beyond Caucasian-majority societies into worldwide Colorism dynamics in general.

Read the entire article here.

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