Abstract
Among 250 urban American Negro families of middle income, the skin colors of both husbands and wives were found to be associated with the measures of social status that delineate the larger society. Skin color operates through marital selection as a determinant of the chance to achieve status. Social status is related to wives' responses to measures of authoritarianism, conformity, anti-white feelings and anti-Negro ones. Skin color of wives is less strongly related to their attitudes than is social status; with the exception of the anti-white scale, color is not associated with attitudes when social status is taken into account. Husbands' skin color, with status measures controlled, is more strongly related to the wives' attitudes than is their own skin color. This suggests that color among American Negroes can best be viewed, like occupation, as a contemporary status symbol shaping the individual's personal world, rather than as a status ascribed at birth and related to the total life experience of the individual.
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