The Color Stigma: Still a Reality in 21st Century America
“I have low self-esteem cuz I’m dark skinned [and] that’s not accepted in the black community. I mean I’m not bad lookin’. I have hair past my shoulders [and] I can dress my tail off! So why do [sic] it matter the color of my skin. I’m just as good as light-skinned girls right?” a high school junior asked in 2005 before adding, “I don’t kno[w] anymore. I’m about to jus[t] give up. What’s the point in tryin’ when no one’s gonna give me a chance.”
Back at a small real estate firm, a 36 year-old black receptionist noted that the staff treated her children differently than those of her white coworkers. “They showed less warmth and friendliness,” she stated in 2002.
Anecdotal statements are not the only evidence that that the hawaii tapout shirts color stigma still exists with its negative perceptions and stereotypes. Furthermore they are not indicative of a few isolated cases. Instead they point to a widespread problem.
When black and white people were asked “who has a better chance of getting ahead in today’s economy?” in a February 2000 CBS poll, 62% of white respondents answered that blacks and whites have an equal chance while only 38% blacks agreed. 57% of black respondents stated that white people had the best chance while 7% of whites felt the same about hard pretzel recipes blacks. Most startling, 0% of blacks gave themselves the advantage while 29% of whites responded that they had the best chance.[1]
Major causes of this “skin-color complex” are:
500 year Historical Perspective:
§ For more than 400 years, black people were victimized in the worst holocaust in human history, in which between 50 to 100 million perished, millions were enslaved, and Portuguese conquerors even established “color hierarchies.” From the 14th century to the 19th century, “expropriation of African labor was the great engine of Europe’s [and America’s] wealth… Over time, Africans’ status in the English colonies of North America shifted… to a highly stigmatized permanent… full-scale lifelong enslavement.”[2]
§ Colonial American legislation decreed black[s] as 3/5 of a person “institutionalizing [them as] part human and part property… as producers of wealth for others.” The inception of “inscribing [this] inferior status began in the 1640s when Virginia courts referred to “black men, women and their children as property.” That state’s “Slave Codes” (1680-1705), which “limited the political rights of free blacks” and South Carolina’s 1670 founding with the establishment of “institutionalized slavery in its charter” further exacerbated the situation. A further deterioration occurred in 1787 following the U.S. Constitutional convention. In anticipation of the 1808 slave importation ban, black women were stripped of control over their own bodies. They were then “regarded as breeders” and often raped or forced into cohabitation with male slaves “to produce more slaves for the owner.” [3]
§ The American Founding Fathers who often eloquently spoke about freedom and individual liberties, supported slavery, reinforcing the color stigma. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the third President justified slavery “by Revenue from Small Oil Palm Estate in Malaysia asserting the superiority of whites and inferiority of blacks” while at the time of his death, George Washington (1732-1799), the first President “owned 123 slaves, [and] rented 40… [At the same time] his wife’s estate had [held] 153 [slaves].”[4]
§ Gradually from 1660 to 1776 southern “free” blacks “lost the right to vote, to join militias, to hire white [laborers], and to testify in court” until they also “carried the stigma of the enslaved,” a stigma which ultimately became associated with color and race. As a result “it was difficult for them to obtain property, education, [and] jobs.”[5]
§ A century of discrimination followed the American Civil War (1860-1865). The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Civil Rights Act of 1875 ruling in 1883 that the 14th Amendment did not prohibit individual discrimination. Thirteen years later, that same court ruled in favor of segregation, the basis of Jim Crow laws, declaring that the south’s “separate but equal” concept was constitutional. Before long, southern blacks were barred from voting, deprived of a quality education (leading to greater socioeconomic disadvantages), from testifying in court cases involving non-black parties, and even from quitting their jobs. folding One Jim Crow law decreed that blacks “could be arrested and imprisoned for breach of contract” if they were “absent from work” or quit their jobs.[6]
§ During the post Civil War period up to the culmination of the Civil Rights movement with passage of the Voting Rights Act heritage kayak fishing of 1965, blacks were also terrorized by white organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) to “ensure submission.” During this era, “violence against African Americans actually became worse in some areas than under slavery [with] 4,742 documented lynchings between 1890 and 1960” and countless undocumented cases.”[7]
Economic Realities:
§ When comparing mean net worth (the average of everyone’s wealth divided by the number of households) the average black family has less than 17 cents for every BIR tin number information dollar the average white family owns.
§
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