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Thoughts on Bullying and Colorism in Black Women’s Remembered Experiences

Document Type

Book Section

Publication Date

2017

Publication Title

Race and Colorism in Education

Abstract

This chapter will share two stories. The stories both focus on a Black woman who has been bullied and, in the process, confronted abuses that were driven by racialized animosity. Although scholarly analyses of student mistreatment are extensively available (e.g., Ahn, Rodkin, & Gest, 2013; Espelage, Hong, Rao, & Low, 2013; Orpinas, Horne, & Staniszewski, 2003), the significance of colorism-discrimination spurred by skin complexion and related traits (Russell, Wilson, & Hall, 1992)—in racially influenced aggressions is often under-recognized or muted. Likewise, researchers who highlight the salience of intra-racial physicality in Black education do not commonly engage the topic of bullying; rather, works tend to encompass calls to account for color bias as a general backdrop to Black life and schooling (Hunter, 2016; Keith & Monroe, 2016; Monroe, 2016), a component of Black racial identity (DeCuir-Gunby, 2009), an element of teacher education (McGee, Alvarez, & Milner, 2016), a factor in within-group differences such as educational attainment (Allen, Telles, and Hunter, 2000) and suspension (Hannon, DeFina, & Bruch, 2013), and an influence on traits such as self-esteem (Robinson & Ward, 1995) and self-efficacy (Thompson & Keith, 2001). As a consequence, the ways that colorist antagonisms frame and inform bullying remain poorly understood despite the prevalence of skin-tone discrimination involving people of color and the presence of interpersonal aggression in educational spaces.

Keywords

Colorism, Bullying, Black Education, Intra-Racial Aggression, Self-Esteem, Self-Efficacy, Student Mistreatment, Educational Inequality, Black Women

Publication Citation

Kimberly Jade Norwood & Carla R. Monroe, Thoughts on Bullying and Colorism in Black Women’s Remembered Experiences, in Race and Colorism in Education 24-38 (Carla R. Monroe ed., 1st edition ed. 2017)

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