Colorism

10 Pages 2601 Words

e’s position a thing coveted by field slaves” (Crawford 2004). House slaves, because of their status often looked down on field slaves, not considering them their equal but a lower class. With this type of stratification within a race, intraracial problems were destined to occur.

Literary Review
The following books, movies, articles, and Internet sources, in this literary review, will attempt to draw information and come to a conclusion about the issue of colorism.
In the article “Intraracial diversity and relations among African-Americans: closeness among black students at a predominantly white university” by Sandra S. Smith and Mignon R. Moore, colorism is discussed on a social economic level. The article states that “homophily” are people drawn to people that are similar to themselves. This article seems to be stating that colorism is based on the fact of social standing. In my paper, I will say that, although that is somewhat true, that the cause of the problem goes further than that. The economic status of a lot of black people is caused by colorism. Colorism is not simply caused by economic status. The fact that Moore and Smith say that people are drawn to others who have the same background is definitely true. That background, however, was shaped from the times of slavery. That was colorism in itself.
Larry D. Crawford, the author of the article “Racism, colorism, and power” writes about the background of colorism. There are many things that I agree with, and a few things that I actually disagree with in this article. This will, however, by my main reference for the background history of colorism. Crawford discusses the history of the “house slave” versus the “field slave”, and how that mentality has stuck with African-Americans since slavery. The paper will even support the fact that Caucasians impact colorism a great deal. The fact that colorism is still present, however, I believ...