IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/joerap/v4y2021i1d10.1007_s41996-020-00054-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Robert L. Reece

    (The University of Texas at Austin)

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 stratification. 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).

Suggested Citation

  • Robert L. Reece, 2021. "The Gender of Colorism: Understanding the Intersection of Skin Tone and Gender Inequality," Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 47-55, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:joerap:v:4:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s41996-020-00054-1
    DOI: 10.1007/s41996-020-00054-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41996-020-00054-1
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s41996-020-00054-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arthur H. Goldsmith & Darrick Hamilton & William Darity Jr, 2006. "Shades of Discrimination: Skin Tone and Wages," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 242-245, May.
    2. Lubhana Malik Mental, 2019. "Mental Health in Adolescents," Global Journal of Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities, Juniper Publishers Inc., vol. 6(3), pages 45-46, March.
    3. Daniel Kreisman & Marcos A. Rangel, 2015. "On the Blurring of the Color Line: Wages and Employment for Black Males of Different Skin Tones," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(1), pages 1-13, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. JooHee Han, 2020. "Does Skin Tone Matter? Immigrant Mobility in the U.S. Labor Market," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 57(2), pages 705-726, April.
    2. Srikant Devaraj & Pankaj C. Patel, 2017. "Skin Tone and Self-Employment: is there an Intra-Group Variation among Blacks?," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 44(1), pages 137-166, June.
    3. Tamar Kricheli Katz & Tali Regev & Shay Lavie & Haggai Porat & Ronen Avraham, 2020. "Those who tan and those who don’t: A natural experiment on colorism," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(7), pages 1-14, July.
    4. Yariv Fadlon & Sophie Tripp, 2015. "The gray area: high school dropout likelihood among skin tone levels of black males," Econometrics Letters, Bilimsel Mektuplar Organizasyonu (Scientific letters), vol. 2(2), pages 1-11.
    5. Katherine Klee & John P. Bartkowski, 2022. "Minding Mental Health: Clinicians’ Engagement with Youth Suicide Prevention," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-20, May.
    6. Mayer, Yael & Ilan, Rotem & Slone, Michelle & Lurie, Ido, 2020. "Relations between traumatic life events and mental health of Eritrean asylum-seeking mothers and their children's mental health," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    7. Wang, Lin & Ngai, Steven Sek-yum, 2020. "The effects of anonymity, invisibility, asynchrony, and moral disengagement on cyberbullying perpetration among school-aged children in China," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    8. Jani Hartikainen & Anna-Maija Poikkeus & Eero A. Haapala & Arja Sääkslahti & Taija Finni, 2021. "Associations of Classroom Design and Classroom-Based Physical Activity with Behavioral and Emotional Engagement among Primary School Students," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-12, July.
    9. Samari, Goleen & Catalano, Ralph & Alcalá, Héctor E. & Gemmill, Alison, 2020. "The Muslim Ban and preterm birth: Analysis of U.S. vital statistics data from 2009 to 2018," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 265(C).
    10. William Darity & Darrick Hamilton & James Stewart, 2015. "A Tour de Force in Understanding Intergroup Inequality: An Introduction to Stratification Economics," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 42(1), pages 1-6, June.
    11. Xu, Wenxin & Shen, Wei & Wang, Shen, 2021. "Intervention of adolescent' mental health during the outbreak of COVID-19 using aerobic exercise combined with acceptance and commitment therapy," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    12. Vanessa Lloyd-Esenkaya & Ailsa J. Russell & Michelle C. St Clair, 2020. "What Are the Peer Interaction Strengths and Difficulties in Children with Developmental Language Disorder? A Systematic Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(9), pages 1-27, April.
    13. Howard Bodenhorn & Carolyn Moehling & Gregory N. Price, 2012. "Short Criminals: Stature and Crime in Early America," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(2), pages 393-419.
    14. Yu Hu & Jingwen Hu & Yi Zhu, 2022. "The Impact of Perceived Discrimination on Mental Health Among Chinese Migrant and Left-Behind Children: A Meta-analysis," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 17(5), pages 2525-2541, October.
    15. Slaughter-Acey, Jaime C. & Brown, Tony N. & Keith, Verna M. & Dailey, Rhonda & Misra, Dawn P., 2020. "A tale of two generations: Maternal skin color and adverse birth outcomes in Black/African American women," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 265(C).
    16. Haleemunnissa, S. & Didel, Siyaram & Swami, Mukesh Kumar & Singh, Kuldeep & Vyas, Varuna, 2021. "Children and COVID19: Understanding impact on the growth trajectory of an evolving generation," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    17. Esmail Shariati & Ali Dadgari & Seyedeh Solmaz Talebi & Gholam Reza Mahmoodi Shan & Hossein Ebrahimi, 2021. "The Effect of the Web-Based Communication between a Nurse and a Family Member on the Perceived Stress of the Family Member of Patients with Suspected or Confirmed COVID-19: A Parallel Randomized Clini," Clinical Nursing Research, , vol. 30(7), pages 1098-1106, September.
    18. Jessica L. Schleider & Michael C. Mullarkey & Kathryn R. Fox & Mallory L. Dobias & Akash Shroff & Erica A. Hart & Chantelle A. Roulston, 2022. "A randomized trial of online single-session interventions for adolescent depression during COVID-19," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(2), pages 258-268, February.
    19. Majid Altuwairiqi & Nan Jiang & Raian Ali, 2019. "Problematic Attachment to Social Media: Five Behavioural Archetypes," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(12), pages 1-36, June.
    20. Cai, Zhengyu & Maguire, Karen & Winters, John V., 2019. "Who benefits from local oil and gas employment? Labor market composition in the oil and gas industry in Texas and the rest of the United States," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:joerap:v:4:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s41996-020-00054-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.