A
Anth0ny
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Domain | Dark-vs-light penalty (effect size) | Study / data set |
---|---|---|
Hourly earnings (immigrants, all races) | Darkest-quintile immigrants earn 0.76 ¢ per $1 made by lightest-quintile co-ethnics (-24 %). | (socialequity.duke.edu) |
Hourly earnings (native-born U.S. Blacks) | One shade lighter = +8–10 % wage bump after controls. | (socialequity.duke.edu) |
Bachelor’s attainment (U.S. Blacks) | Very-light skin: 47 %; very-dark skin: 23 % (-24 pp). | (scholarcommons.scu.edu) |
Federal criminal sentences (all males) | Dark-skinned defendants receive 13–15 % longer sentences than light-skinned same-race defendants. | (journals.uchicago.edu) |
Online-dating swipe rate (Tinder experiment, 2024) | Asian male face lightened one shade: +25 pp matches; darkened one shade: –20 pp vs. baseline photo. | (tandfonline.com) |
Wealth gap inside Black households | Median net worth of lightest-skin Black adults is 3× that of darkest-skin peers. | (academic.oup.com) |
TDLR
- the darker= –10 % on wages and dateability.
The penalty stacks almost linearly until it plateaus in the darkest quintile. - Colorism is harder than schooling in some cases.
A dark-skinned Black grad earns less, on average, than a light-skinned peer with one full year less education. (socialequity.duke.edu) - Sentencing bias isn’t just Black-vs-White—shade within Black matters.
Afrocentric features + dark tone equal an extra 1–2 years on a 10-year sentence. (journals.uchicago.edu) - Dating apps magnify the bias.
One Photoshop step toward “whiter” skin restored about ¾ of the match loss Asian men suffer versus White controls. (tandfonline.com) - Escape hatch = human-capital + phenotype.
Light-skinned immigrants with college English earn more than darker natives; phenotype trumps nativity in labor markets. (socialequity.duke.edu)
lighter skin inside any non-White group benefits:
8-10 % paycheck,
halves your odds of extreme sentencing
and almost doubles right-swipes
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