Light skin preference

Lately I have been asking myself how anyone can do work during this extraordinary and dizzying time we are living in? And I am thinking in the philosophical realm as opposed to logistically.

And yes, I actually can work. I’m just thinking that it is a very distracting time for most anybody attending or working at a university. I say this because I’m in the midst of some incredible research — on color and color consciousness — and yet, it is difficult to ignore the unprecedented doings of this nation’s new president and his administration.

And yet I stop to think that whether the new president is impeached or not, the need to research what I am researching — light-skin preference — will remain. What I examine is light-skin preference in the Mexican, Central American and Andean communities of this nation, particularly in relationship to indigeneity and denial of indigeneity. Perhaps counter-intuitively, this is a taboo topic in these communities. The reason for that is because I primarily examine the internal dimension to this phenomenon; i.e. how it plays out within family/relatives/friends. The external, of course, manifests as racial profiling. Part of what I choose to examine is the earliest memories when children become conscious of their color and that there is meaning attached to their color, and yes, most of these memories are negative. For rest of column, go to:

http://diverseeducation.com/article/92432/