Light Skinned African Americans

Social constructionism is the way one’s reality is shaped through one’s experience and interactions with others, and how one perceives others will experience the interaction with oneself. There are two way that reality is socially constructed, the first is through the looking-glass self coined by Cooley. The looking-glass self describes the process of how one thinks about how others perceive oneself, so one will start to act in a way that fit other’s perception of oneself and taking on that identity. An example of this, is when an employee thinks that his boss believes that he is a hard worker, so the employee will start believing that he is a hard workers, and to maintain this perception the employee will work harder than everyone else. Another

However, race is also socially constructed like gender, deviance, and beauty. One way that race is socially constructed is the difference between the treatment of light skinned African American and dark skinned African American. For instance, a light skinned African American woman is more likely to get a major role in a movie than a dark skinned woman who will mostly likely get a supportive role. The effect that media has is that it is indirectly stating that being a light skinned African American is better than being a dark skinned African American. Also, they might receive certain privileges that a dark skinned African American might not get, like a higher salary, more awards, and spotlight for being the lead in a movie. Another effect that this has is that dark skinned people might try to use lightening cream or bleaching products to lightening their own skin. Some dark skinned people are often bully for their skin color or they might hear that they are pretty for a dark skinned person, however, a light skinned person might not hear these things. Even historically, light skinned and dark skinned people was treated differently for example, during slavery, most of the light skinned people worked in the Master’s house, taking care of the family, while most of the dark skinned people worked in the fields. For some people who are light skinned, most people will assume that one of their parents are white, and by having a white parent,they might be able to access the privilege of a White person that a dark skinned person might not get a chance to