Colorism and its impact on anti-Black racism in Asia.

It’s the end of the summer, and as often at the end of a summer, my skin is a dark, golden brown. As a child growing up in sunny Arizona, I cherish my memories of playing outside, swimming in neighborhood pools, and hiking in the hot sun. I love my brown color and think nothing of the shades it turns based on the seasons of the year. But this year, similar to the many years I would return as a child to my mother’s native Taiwan, I field many questions about my skin color.

“Are you mixed?”

“You don’t look like you are from here”

“Your skin is so dark.”

And my favorite…

“You look like a Black person.” (Ni kan qi lai shi hei ren).

There are some very veiled and not so veiled biases in these comments and brings up the centuries-old ideallogy in Asia that lighter skin is better than darker skin.

At its root, colorism, and the resulting discrimination and bias that is a result of colorism has its roots in classism in Asia. Unlike the racist ideology that was a direct result of the rationalism of slavery by Western European countries of Portugal, Spain, Great Britain (Kendi, 2016), colorism in Asia came from the idea that lower-wage workers had to work in the fields and had darker skin as a result. Lighter-skinned people were able to stay out of the sun. “Having white skin isn’t only about being Western. In Asia, there is a deeply rooted cultural notion that associates dark…