Colorism: (Still) getting away with racism.
Color Matters: Skin Tone Bias and the Myth of a Post Racial America is an edited volume with contributors from the fields of law, psychology, and social work. The nine chapters build on each other, moving from ancient history, through close inspection of slavery and subsequent racism in the United States, to racism's and colorism's effects on everyday lives at the beginning of the 21st century, and ending with recommendations for the future. Colorism, similar to racism, is an ongoing consequence of the myth of White superiority, manifested as "the allocation of privilege and disadvantage according to the lightness or darkness of one's skin" (Burke, 2008, p. 17) and "the tendency to perceive or behave toward members of a racial category based on the lightness or darkness of their skin tone" (Maddox Gray, 2002, p. 250) In the United States, educational opportunities, employment, incarceration, and wealth can be linked to skin tone, with definite advantages for people with lighter skin.