Skin color trumped wealth and education as the criterion of Trinidadian social prestige

Evidence

Surveillance of Beauty The surveillance of beauty is another way that Muslim American women who wear the hijab are surveilled for their cultural practices. Whiteness has become a marker of beauty and privilege both in the United States as well as in countries that make up the southern hemisphere, such as India (Hunter 2011). This is evidenced by the increased interest and use of skin lightening creams both in the United States and internationally. Hunter (2011) refers to “racial capital” as a material benefit people possess based on their skin tone. In a racialized society, the lighter one’s skin tone, the more access one has to economic resources such as jobs or social networks (Glenn 2009; Hunter 2011). Muslim women who wear the hijab were told wearing it made them ugly; they are also racialized for their beauty. — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 403 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Color becomes the judgment criterion regardless of education or attainment; Mixed-light complexions gain economic and social status in colonial societies; Indentured Indians replicated subcontinental caste stratification in Trinidad (+8 more)

Related

• Mixed-light complexions gain economic and social status in colonial societies (similarity 0.87)
• Skin tone confers material economic benefits through racial capital (similarity 0.85)
• Color becomes the judgment criterion regardless of education or attainment (similarity 0.85)
• Color, not wealth or education, governed social prestige in colonial Trinidad (similarity 0.82)
• Trinidad’s color hierarchy measured privilege in gradations finer than race (similarity 0.81)
• Whiteness links beauty with citizenship and uncontested belonging. (similarity 0.81)
• The hijab functions like skin tone by marking bodies as racial others (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Skin tone confers material economic benefits through racial capital #expands (0.65) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 403
• Cricket clubs in Trinidad reproduced a color-class hierarchy within the game #exemplifies (0.60)
• Jamaica’s social order was a finely graded pigmentocracy of caste and class #corroborates (0.60)
• Education and refinement could qualify blackness in Antillean social judgment #qualifies (0.55) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 995