COLORISM
In 2019 Art Responders launches Colorism: The Spectrum of Internalized Bias. This multimedia community art event will include extensive education programming, documentation and assessment, including publication of an educational toolkit on combatting intra-racial prejudice.
Colorism, or the phenomenon of discrimination based on skin tone and other physical traits within the same racial or ethnic group, has been a tacitly accepted set of practices among many cultures for centuries. Physiological traits are assigned rankings based on their proximity to age-old white, Anglo-Saxon beauty norms; darkness is always disadvantaged, and the superiority of ‘whiteness’ reinforced. One better-known example is some 20th century African-American churches’ use of the ‘paper bag test’ to determine community members’ fitness to join. These practices appear to exist within a vast array of ethnicities across the globe.
Colorism: The Spectrum of Internalized Bias breaks down tacit codes that ethnic groups have used to apply anachronistic physical ideals to today’s hybrid population. It will consider how and why minority groups, including European indigenous groups, have developed aspirations toward unattainable physical features, what forms this intra-racial discrimination takes, and how to dismantle this kind of habitual bigotry. It uses music, creative writing, video, and new media as well as more traditional cultural products to incite dialogue and solicit tools for confronting bias and changing perspectives. Programming will target multigenerational members of underserved East Bay communities, through public education workshops, performances, interactive graphics, and more. Viewers will be encouraged to connect with how they have been affected by internalized bias as well as how they might think and act beyond current constructs of racial identity while understanding past harms these have caused.
Launched with an exhibition and catalog at San Francisco’s Root Division Gallery in 2019, Colorism: The Spectrum of Internalized Bias introduces audiences to the ideologies and histories behind this largely unspoken phenomenon, offering tools for addressing self-hatred and implicit bias from within their own communities. Catalogue available at https://issuu.com/rootdivision/docs/colorism_catalogue.