Each year, Hollywood necessarily comes under criticism because of its lack of ideology. But another lesser-known nevertheless still pervasive difficulty also resurfaces: that the absence of diversity in the skin tone.
It occurred again with”From the Heights,” a big-budget movie based on the music created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, that was called out this week due to its dearth of black, Black Latinos in major roles.
Colorism — or discrimination against darker-skinned individuals in their same cultural category — lurks deep one of nearly all communities with varying amounts of saliva. However, it will not get talked about, which might be a drawback for its democratic justice attempts that intensified following the police killing of George Floyd this past year.
Monk says the matter is widespread in most communities of colour and has been taboo in part because it is uncomfortable to discuss inner strife whilst at the same time fighting against wider discrimination according to race and ethnicity.
“In ways, colorism and epidermis rock stratification is a much harder problem to fix since you can make the argument that everybody is involved from the machine of colorism,” Monk explained. “If we consider race and racial inequality without carrying these skin tone gaps then we are really missing how this method of racial inequality works”
“I could hear the frustration and hurt, of feeling unseen from the comments,” Miranda wrote. “I hear that without adequate dark-skinned Afro-Latino representation, the job feels extractive of this community we desired so far to represent pride and joy.”
The mythical Rita Moreno also turned introspective on colorism afterwards she confronted backlash in her shield of Miranda when she suggested that Latinos must be thankful they are being represented in almost any manner. She’s since apologized.
There’s little information that monitors discrimination based on skin tone, and for that reason it’s difficult to measure exactly how pervasive colorism is. However, the research which do exist show that individuals with darker skin have greater incarceration rates, reduced access to healthcare and education and reside in poorer neighborhoods, many experts say.
