Color Consciousness Research Articles

“Crabs in the Barrel”: Strategic Color Consciousness of Black and Asian Americans on Anti-Asian Attacks

“Crabs in the Barrel”: Strategic Color Consciousness of Black and Asian Americans on Anti-Asian Attacks

Losing Color Consciousness: Platformization and Precarious Practices in Premiere Pro

Losing Color Consciousness: Platformization and Precarious Practices in Premiere Pro

Chinese mothers' profiles of color-conscious socialization and social dominance orientation: Relations to children's racial attitudes.

This study concerns Chinese mothers' color-conscious socialization and social dominance orientation and how these relate to children's racial attitudes. Data were collected from a sample of 155 Chinese children (71 girls) aged 7-11 years and their mothers, from urban regions across China (Shanghai, Jinan, and cities in Jiangsu Province), including observations of mothers' color-conscious practices, self-reported social dominance orientation, and children's attitudes toward light-skinned Chinese, tan-skinned Chinese, and White groups. All children were born in urban areas and from middle-income families. Variable- and person-centered analyses suggested three areas of color-conscious practices, racial appearance, cultural background, and grouping, and revealed heterogeneity in associations between color consciousness and social dominance orientation. Mothers' acknowledgment of shared culture was associated with children's positive attitudes toward their racial ingroup with darker skin tone. This study emphasizes the importance of a nuanced and contextualized understanding of color-conscious socialization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Colorism and Stereotypes in Asia: A Post colonial Reading and Evaluation

Asia with its vibrant nature of different culture and celebrations, somehow portrays norms and ideas that would consciously become an integral part of cultural and societal values. As such, color consciousness is co-related in the very nature of Asia as a whole in numerous forms; of which allows into identity, beauty and social and cultural values. This study is investigating and evaluating the idea of colorism that of which has been in the deep-rooted ideology of each part of Asia from the landscape of history itself; colonial structure to class, identity, beauty and representations. The idea is constructed in various forms of class structure, thus formulated into beauty standards and stereotypes in Asian culture. Through postcolonial reading of theoretical practice in cultural artifacts makes it possible to examine this issue efficiently.

Pro-Con Debate: Perioperative Research Should Be Color-Blind.

Profound racial and ethnic disparities have been documented in health and health care outcomes in recent decades. Some researchers have erroneously ascribed these inequities to biological variations, prompting debate as to how, or even if, race and ethnicity should be included as an outcome variable. Color blindness is a racial ideology with roots in constitutional law that posits that equality is best achieved by disregarding the racial and ethnic characteristics of the individual. Color consciousness, in contrast, approaches disparities with the knowledge that experiences related to one's race and ethnicity influence an individual's health and well-being. In this Pro-Con commentary article, we discuss the concept of color blindness and debate its use as an approach in medicine and research.

The Color Line by Igiaba Scego

Reviewed by: The Color Line by Igiaba Scego Adele Newson-Horst IGIABA SCEGO The Color Line Trans. John Cullen & Gregory Conti. New York. Other Press. 2022. 544 pages. IGIABA SCEGO'S third novel, The Color Line, is a multilayered adventure. It features two women, more than a century apart, who encounter many of the same struggles despite societal progress. The adventure rests with movement—undertaking a journey—while the effort to occupy space freely is the struggle. The work is nothing less than brilliant. It has everything: a compelling story, a historical lesson, a love story, and an urgent message. Lafanu Brown is a half-Chippewa, half-Haitian artist living in antebellum America. She is discovered by a wealthy society woman who seeks to impress upon the world her magnanimous nature concerning the Negro. From that point forward, Lafanu becomes dependent upon the patronage of white women. She sees Italy as the mecca for artists. The story begins in Rome in 1887, a period historically known as the Scramble for Africa. A newly unified Italy has decided that it would like to "go and win the fatherland a place in the sun," so it embarks upon East Africa. Lafanu at this point is forty-five years old and living as a portrait artist in Italy. The expatriate American is attacked in the Piazza Colonna after word reaches citizens that Italian troops have been massacred in East Africa. In addition to a prologue and an epilogue, the twenty-one sections are designated significantly as "Crossings." Apart from being a compelling read, there is much to unpack in this work. Under the rubric Crossings I, the narrative shifts to the first-person point of view of Leila, a young African (Somali) Italian woman. Her family migrated to Italy to flee the dictatorship. Leila is an art [End Page 77] curator who works to restore Lafanu Brown to her rightful place in history. By turns, Leila conflates the struggles of Lafanu with those of her cousin Bini, who seeks to escape a lawless Mogadishu in the present time. Both Lafanu and Binti are assaulted viciously for the space they chose to occupy, both suffered serious trauma, and both used art as therapy to aid recovery. So the story shifts from the late nineteenth century to the present by turns to tell the story of recovery. This book features a host of memorable characters, including a lustful Frederick Douglass-like character, a lesbian dolente, and nineteenth-century eccentric women. It examines color consciousness in the larger European society. The British characters do not see Italians as Europeans, and Italians see themselves as superior to Africans. Scots and Irish servants are on the bottom of the white socioeconomic scale. The preoccupation with color as a civilizing agent is exhaustive. Above all this is an immigration story—a story of African migration. Binti writes in a letter to Leila, "I'd like to have a world where we Africans have the chance to move around." Restricted by laws, Africans are unable to travel the world like their counterparts in European countries. As for the characters who are successful in their crossings, Bim Adewunmi's assertion is relevant here: "All immigrants live a variation of the biblical act made famous by Lot's wife: They always look back." Adele Newson-Horst Morgan State University Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

The Comparative Research on the Color Application of Chinese and Western Film Directors

As one of the common elements of films, color has always played its unique value. It not only decorates the pictures of the films but also assists in expressing the emotions and states of the characters. The extensive use of color in films reflects the self-innovation and technological breakthroughs of modern film and television art. From early black and white films to modern color films, the aesthetic trend of human beings is also evolving with the times. Chinese and Western directors have also made certain differences in the use of color due to subjective and objective factors. This paper takes the different color use styles of Chinese and Western film directors as the research object and adopts the comparative analysis method. Firstly, it briefly describes the development of color films, color functions, and several characteristics in films, and then introduces the different concepts of color used by Chinese and Western directors through specific examples and analyzes the reasons in detail. Finally, the differences in color consciousness and use style between the two are obtained. Chinese directors pay more attention to the symbolic expressiveness of color and are experts in using the freehand style of color, while Western directors attach significance to the structure of color in films, and the color use style is more realistic.

An Integrative Model for the Development of Anti-Racist Behavior in White Adolescents

We propose an integrative model for the development of anti-racism in white adolescents that unpacks and combines critical consciousness, color consciousness, anti-racism, and Critical Race Theory frameworks. Black and Brown youth in the U.S. face increasing rates of peer-directed racism, which contribute to long-term negative physical, psychological, academic, and behavioral outcomes. Despite increased focus on how critical consciousness and anti-racism develop uniquely in adolescence, there are no existing theories that provide an integrated, comprehensive model of anti-racist development in white adolescents. Our model unpacks and reorganizes the core features of four prominent theories into cognitive, psychological, and behavioral components of anti-racism development in white adolescents based on existing research to support a next-generation of hypotheses for future research. In doing so, we aim to provide a contemporary theoretical foundation for research that will elucidate anti-racism development among white youth, and help to dismantle structural racism against Black and Brown people in the U.S.

Gender, Race, and Fortunes in the East India Company's 'Familial Proto-State': The Evidence of Scottish Wills and Testaments, c.1740-c.1820

The family unit has become an important lens for investigating the social, gendered, and racial dimensions of early British imperialism in Asia. Using evidence derived from wills and testaments registered by Scots at the English East India Company’s settlements between 1740 and 1820, this article explores how colonial wealth was redistributed. In doing so it reconsiders how families and kinship acted as both a transhemispheric connection between Europe and the Indian Ocean World and a disruptor of social, gendered, and racial dynamics.
 It queries arguments that family boundaries could be porous enough to incorporate mixed-race children resulting from relationships between Europeans and local women. Analysis of overall patterns of wealth allocation, rather than individual family case studies, reveals a clear tendency to separate or ‘silo’ such children. Offspring born to local women received far less than family back in Scotland and were usually left in the place of their birth. Families in Scotland stressed a political economy of profit remittance and discouraged the creation of new obligations to children and local women. Considerable sums were instead allocated to female relatives. One result of the policing of extended family boundaries was a heightening in pre-1820s Scottish society of colour consciousness and racialised notions of identity. In this way, the Indian Ocean World, just as surely as better-known processes such as the Atlantic slave trade, contributed a practical and immediate set of imperatives driving new concepts of race and racialisation in Enlightenment era Scotland.

Cécité partielle

While France is largely considered a “colorblind” society, which hinders any public use of racial categories, this article explores the case of international procedure, arguing that it constitutes an exception to institutional colorblindness in the French context. Racial categories are not only explicitly used on a daily basis by adoption professionals, but their use is also officially encouraged, yet in an ambiguous way. In this regard, adoption procedures operate as a moment of color consciousness for many adoptive parents. By focusing on this particular case study, the article aims more generally to unpack the stakes of the taboo surrounding race in France.*Full article in French

The Color Consciousness of Constitutional Color Blindness

The Color Consciousness of Constitutional Color Blindness Jack Jackson (bio) Mark Golub. Is Racial Equality Unconstitutiona? New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 232 pp. $29.95 (pb). ISBN: 9780190090081. In reading Mark Golub's quite thought-provoking book, Is Racial Equality Unconstitutional?, I found myself returning throughout to two canonical theorists not engaged in the text: Karl Marx and Alexis de Tocqueville. Golub's excellent exploration of white supremacy and constitutional politics is in many ways carrying forward Marx's critique of "rights" and the liberal constitutional state developed in "On the Jewish Question" and updating Tocqueville's observation in Democracy in America that formal legal equality and flourishing white supremacy are compatible political projects. Marx's critique was spurred, in small part, by a report from Tocqueville's travel companion Gustave de Beaumont: "'There is not, in the United States, either a state religion or a religion declared to be that of a majority, or a preponderance of one religion over another. The state remains aloof from all religions.'"1 Marx zeroes in on the fact that a religion-blind constitutional state may exist harmoniously with, and indeed help reproduce and secure, a social condition where "religion not only continues to exist but is fresh and vigorous."2 Echoing Marx, Golub criticizes a Supreme Court that "privatizes racial preferences as [End Page 844] beyond the legitimate concern of a color-blind state" and argues that the col-or-blind project enables and ensures the continuity of a polity "fundamentally structured by relations of racial domination and subordination."3 Tocqueville directly addressed the social conditions of white supremacy in the United States. Although slavery still existed when Tocqueville toured the country, he noted the virulence, or perhaps vigorousness, of white supremacy in those areas where slavery had been formally abolished. Here is Tocqueville: "the prejudice rejecting the Negro appears to increase in proportion to their emancipation and that inequality cuts deep into social customs, as it is effaced from the law."4 Golub is following a similar path of inquiry when he states that he seeks to "understand the social processes through which racial subordination is rendered ordinary, legitimate, and just" in an era of formal legal equality articulated through both the constitutional doctrine and constitutional vision of "color blindness."5 Golub trains his fire on the fantasy of the "color-blind" Constitution. Entering into constitutional law with Justice Harlan's famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), today colorblindness is a pillar of constitutional faith on the political Right. It is a theoretical cudgel used to whack even the most mild and limited programs designed to address the legacies and contemporary practices of racial exclusion and domination. To illustrate, Golub cites Justice Clarence Thomas quoting Justice Harlan in a 2007 case striking down a democratically enacted (rather than judicially imposed) integration plan in Seattle's public schools: "I am quite comfortable in the company I keep. My view of the Constitution is Justice Harlan's view in Plessy: 'Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.' And my view was the rallying cry for the lawyers who litigated Brown."6 Golub does a masterful job of exploding this smooth citational line linking Harlan's dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Court's opinion in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), and today's right-wing majority on the Court. He offers a superbly rich and nuanced reading of both the facts and reasoning in Plessy v. Ferguson to demonstrate that even at its inception in Justice Harlan's dissent, "color blindness" was a confusing and contested concept that surely was not blind to race in either law or society. As well, he helpfully reminds us that the phrase "our Constitution is color-blind" never appears in Brown v. Board of Education. Moreover, in the hands of the current Court majority it functions as a paradoxical doctrine, relying on the very thing it claims to erase: color consciousness. That is, color blindness is a form of "white identity" politics on the Right.7 And, Golub contends, this project surprisingly constitutes the conceptual and political grounds of its would-be liberal critics. The last point strikes...

Black Misandry and the Killing of Black Boys and Men

ABSTRACTThe ways in which Black boys and men are framed and projected within U.S. society reveal clear messages of Black misandry, Negrophobia, and scripting of Black male bodies. From “tar baby” to “thug” Black boys and men are always already under surveillance—leading to prejudice, physical violence, and criminalized projections. Yet, commitments to and investments in colorblind rhetoric and ideology seem to obscure the realities that gendered racism against Black men and boys are not newsworthy and have little, if anything, to do with race. In fact, as has been seen in response to some of the more high-profile cases in the public killing of Black men and boys, colorblind rhetoric has been used to deny the racial realities of these events and experiences. To contribute to this literature, the current study analyzes qualitative interview data from 25 individuals focused on their perceptions of race and the killing of Black boys and men. Our data offer two critical points to contemporary discussions of race and gendered racism. First, the already available scripts about Black male bodies (e.g., fear and avoidance) can be used to justify racism and violence against Black boys and men. And, second, racism can be rationalized based on people’s preconceived notions and, even more specifically, because of their color consciousness (e.g., Black male equals threat). The findings reveal that the stereotyping and profiling of Black boys and men are rationalized within a national rhetoric that posits Black boys and men as problems and their killings are justified by Black misandry, which ultimately reveals the costs of their Blackmaleness.

Colour Relations in Black and White

I argue that it is possible to perceptually represent colour relations between two objects, without perceptually representing their colours. Such primitive relational colour representation (PRCR) goes against the orthodox view that we represent colour relations by virtue of representing colours. I first argue that under certain assumptions, PRCR is conceptually and even nomically possible. I then compare two possible models of PRCR: the linguaform model and chromatic edge model, the latter involving iconic rather than discursive representation. I argue that the chromatic edge model gives a better account of putative cases of PRCR in cerebral achromatopsia, a rare disorder of colour consciousness.

Is Racial Equality Unconstitutional? by Mark Golub

Reviewed by: Is Racial Equality Unconstitutional? by Mark Golub Steven White Is Racial Equality Unconstitutional?. By Mark Golub. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xviii, 210. $65.00, ISBN 978-0-19-068360-3.) This book intervenes in the legal debate between advocates of a “colorblind Constitution” and their critics by arguing for a rejection of certain [End Page 936] shared premises (p. x). In Mark Golub’s analysis, the conservative judicial project of colorblindness actually advocates for a particular type of racial consciousness: the protection of white rights against a range of proposed remedies for addressing persistent racial inequities. By accepting the framing preferred by color-blind constitutionalists, Golub argues, their critics neglect the “peculiar form of race-consciousness that is produced through demands for nonconsideration of race” (p. 167). To make his argument, Golub traces the notion of colorblindness through detailed examinations of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954), before he discusses how conservative jurists used color-blind rhetoric in the late twentieth century to articulate a politically powerful defense against further efforts to combat lingering racial injustices that continue to the present day. Golub’s primary contribution is theoretical rather than historical, but he uses historical scholarship to illustrate his theoretical argument. To connect his historical analysis to contemporary debates about the limits of the legal system for addressing racial injustice, Golub emphasizes the influence of white southern moderates in the aftermath of Brown. Their response to Brown, Golub argues, helped create a color-blind constitutionalist template designed to simultaneously oppose meaningful federal intervention into racial inequities while maintaining a rhetorical attack on Jim Crow discrimination. As Golub writes, white moderates “set the terms for an emergent national racial compromise reducible neither to the egalitarian demands of the civil rights movement, nor to the preservation of Jim Crow–era racial caste” (p. 102). The model of color-blind constitutionalism that emerged from moderate responses to the Brown decision is not simply skeptical of color consciousness, as is often claimed. Rather, by equating white racism with the extremity of Jim Crow, color-blind constitutionalists are able to offer rhetorical support for racial equality while treating contemporary forms of racial discrimination as though they lay beyond the scope of proper redress. Golub traces this rhetoric from early rumblings (for example, Justice William Rehnquist’s dissent in Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver Colorado [1973]) to more recent cases, like Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007), where conservative jurists succeeded in limiting the capacity of a policy intervention to achieve school desegregation. Some legal scholars might feel that Golub is picky at times (in describing work he is generally sympathetic to, he often notes that it “concedes too much” or “fails to appreciate” the particular interpretation he advocates [pp. 147, 80]). For historians, some of the narrative will seem familiar, as Golub relies on secondary sources for his historical analysis. On the whole, though, Is Racial Equality Unconstitutional? concisely ties together legal and historical scholarship to produce a clear intervention into a major debate in contemporary American politics. In doing so, it raises compelling (and disconcerting) questions about whether substantive racial equality is possible under the constraints of American constitutionalism. [End Page 937] Steven White Syracuse University Copyright © 2019 The Southern Historical Association

Colour Perception in Ancient World

How did the human thought form the surrounding color information into the persistent semantic images of a mythological, pseudoscientific and religious nature? The concepts associated with colour perception are suggested. The existence of colour environment does not depend on the human consciousness. The colour culture formation is directly related to the level of the human consciousness development and the possibility to influence the worldview and culture. The colour perception of a person goes through the stages similar to the development of colour vision in a child. Like any development, the colour consciousness has undergone stages of growth and decline, evolution and stagnation. The way of life and difficult conditions for existence made their own adjustments to the development of the human perception of the surrounding world. Wars have been both a powerful engine of progress in all spheres of life and a great destructive force demolishing the already created and preserved heritage. The surrounding world has always been interesting for humans, evoked images and fantasies in the consciousness of ancient people. Unusual and inexplicable natural phenomena spawned numerous legends and myths which was reflected in the ancient art and architecture and, accordingly, in a certain manifestation of colour in the human society. The colour perception of the ancient man, his pragmatic, utilitarian attitude to colour is considered as well as the influence of dependence on external conditions of existence and their reflection in the colour culture of antiquity. “Natural Science” conducts research in the field of the colour nature and their authorial interpretation of the Hellenic period. Several authorial concepts of the ancient world have been considered.

Skin Color and Colorism: Global Research, Concepts, and Measurement

We examine a vast, interdisciplinary, and increasingly global literature concerning skin color and colorism, which are related to status throughout the world. The vast majority of research has investigated Western societies, where color and colorism have been closely related to race and racism. In Latin America, the two sets of concepts have particularly overlapped. In the rest of the world, particularly in Asia, color and colorism have also been important but have evolved separately from the relatively new concepts of race and racism. In recent years, however, color consciousness and white supremacy appear to have been increasingly united, globalized, and commodified, as exemplified by the global multibillion-dollar skin-lightening industry. Finally, we document the growing methodological attention to measurements of skin color and social science data that incorporate skin color measures.

Colorblind Individualism, Color Consciousness, and the Indian Child Welfare Act: Representations of Adoptee Best Interest in Newspaper Coverage of the Baby Veronica Case

ABSTRACTTransracial adoption debates revolve around adoptee best interest with support focusing on individual rights and opposition emphasizing identity. How the media portrayed the Baby Veronica case highlights tensions between colorblind individualism and collective color consciousness central to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). Content analysis of 262 mainstream and Native American newspaper articles illustrates the complex use of both frameworks with Native American sources more often noting the importance of tribal ties and drawing from a more diverse range of authorities. Findings have implications for public attitudes regarding tribal rights, adoption and foster care policies and practices, and the future of ICWA.

보건의료 색채환경을 위한 색채 의식 및 선호 경향 연구

This study is a basic research to suggest user-centered healthcare environmental color, which aims to analyze tendency of color consciousness and preference depending on the user characteristics (generation, gender, residential area, and environment). For this purpose, this study constructed an analysis tool through the literature review with regard to environmental color of healthcare facility and influential factors of color preference. Besides, an online survey regarding general usage and satisfaction, health related color consciousness, and color preference tendency of healthcare facility was conducted targeting from 20s to 60s, total 1,500 persons. The results of this study are as follows: (1) The usage and satisfaction of healthcare facilities were higher for older generation and accessible urban area. (2) The respondents were aware that color and health are related, recognizing 'green' as healthy and stress relieving color. Besides, 'natural' and 'clear' was the highest in health related color image. 'Light' which relates to vitality was high as well for older generation. (3) In the color preference tendency survey, hue PB was generally the most highly preferred, in details, younger generation preferred B and R while older generation preferred G. The survey also showed high value and chroma were preferred, while female and younger generation preferred high value of 9.0 and low chroma close to achromatic color, which presented older generation preferred vivid color.

Deflating ‘Race’

ABSTRACT:‘Race’ has long searched for a stable, suitable idea, with no consensus on a master meaning in sight. What I call deflationary pluralism about the existence of race recognizes that various meanings may be true as far as they go but avoids murky disputes over whether there are races in some sense. Once we have rejected the notion that racial essences yield innate cognitive differences, there is little point to arguing over the race idea. In its place, I propose the idea of socioancestry, which jettisons racial thinking yet recognizes the social dynamics of color. For example, Black Americans, many of whom have traceable non-African ancestry, constitute an Africa-identified, socioancestrally black subgroup. ‘Race’ talk is not needed to sustain legitimate color-conscious approaches to social identity and social justice. Long-standing fixation on the race idea has obscured the simple truth that visible continental ancestry is the root of the social reality of color consciousness.

Decolonizing Intimacies

This essay explores colorism, or the ranking of individuals based on skin color or racialized phenotype, with a focus on women of Mexican descent. I offer a history of skin color consciousness, linking it to Spanish and Anglo American colonial beliefs about the value of women as reproductive objects and to contemporary articulations of lived experiences with colorism. First, I trace colorism historically, considering how discourses of difference built on sixteenth-century notions of gendered contamination and nineteenthcentury notions of purity and prestige were used to construct and privilege whiteness. Next, I draw from interviews with four women who self-identify as Mexican-descent to document how personal experiences with colorism are remembered and understood. These narratives reveal the importance of the family as an institution within which a collective memory of historical white supremacy is continuously performed through colorism. The recognition that colorism is both reproduced and resisted through intimate familial relations opens a space to ask questions about the relationships between contemporary experience and histories of colonization and suggests, finally, that the family is a critical site for decolonial healing.