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Colorism is a form of discrimination based on skin tone wherein people with light(er) complexions are advantaged over those with dark(er) ones. In this review, we define key terms, explore colorism as an individual and structural phenomenon, and identify some predominant themes in the existing scholarship on colorism. We review three case studies of contemporary uses and ramifications of colorism in order to encourage scholars to engage with this important field. These case studies are skin tone’s impact on U.S. politics, “transraciality,” the appropriation of skin tone, and finally, the global skin lightening industry. While the first two are mostly focused on the United States, the third enables an appreciation of the global dynamics of colorism, and links back to the national and regional contextual politics of skin tone.

Scholarship designed to ask questions about the meanings of, identities of, and experiences of the offspring of interracial unions has been around for almost a century but has only seriously and significantly developed since the 1990s. From the early days of theorizing such experience from the counselor’s chair, psychological models planted early seeds, yet the ground of multiracial experience was one fundamentally wrapped up with institutions, social structures, political movements, histories and stories, racialization and microaggressions, family and peer dynamics, and other important social, cultural, economic, historical, collective, and political realities. Multiracial scholarship developed early on from an interest in understanding how the offspring of interracial unions, whether white/black, black/Asian, Latinx/white, and so on, develop understandings of themselves, as well as how others influence that understanding; thus, identity was a crucial starting point. Appearances, phenotype, and the sociocultural models of racial classification and the role that these play in the complex process of multiracial identity formation, development, maintenance, and change have become staple research questions. The racial demographics of race and multiraciality, along with the politics of census categorization and the tracing of such demographic and policy shifts over time, have provided more-macro contexts that have played into the ways we both study and, therefore, understand multiraciality. In the 2010s, scholars really began to move outside the black-white binary, more intersectionally and transdisciplinarily, and across national and historical contexts to develop an even more nuanced and complex theoretical and empirical understanding of multiraciality. From early-21st-century developments in critical mixed-race theory to the political importance of multiraciality in social movements, and from the role of multiraciality in popular culture and marketing to the potential and pitfalls of multiraciality and its politics dismantling ideas of race, realities of racism, and the pursuit of racial and social justice, scholarship on multiraciality has given us deeply important understandings.

This article is a critical review of racial and ethnic categories on the U.S. Census with a focus on how the census categories affect opportunities to track racial and ethnic inequality. The authors summarize how motivations behind the census categories changed from a historical basis in controlling people of color and protecting Whiteness toward a contemporary orientation around equity. Yet, many issues remain that confound the racial and ethnic census data, which are then used in research. A look at these issues and possible changes for the upcoming 2020 census serves as a critical reminder of the limitations of the census data. Taking this information into account, the authors conclude with comments and suggestions on the principles underlying racial and ethnic data collection on the census and the implications for tracking inequality.

This article suggests that White supremacy versus White privilege provides a clearer and more accurate conceptual understanding of how racism operates, evolves, and sustains itself. This article suggests a specific model for teaching White supremacy, the White supremacy flower, and describes the application and benefits of the model.

Dominant depictions of Black families in US scholarship and political discourse have been negative; tropes of defunct, hyper-masculinized men and welfare queens along with a general ‘tangle of pathology’ indictment are common. This article supports other scholarship, which challenges these depictions and acknowledges common positive traits associated with Black families. Through an examination of interviews with 39 famous Black leaders from the US Civil Rights Era coupled with an extant review of sociological Black family literature, this article highlights three positive, supportive traits common to Black families: (1) extended and fictive kin; (2) racial socialization; and (3) education. These findings challenge the assertion of the Black family as dysfunctional by highlighting multiple Black family voices. The analysis relies upon Black families’ articulations of their cultural strengths and successes, which contrasts with the prevailing review of Black families that uses structural approaches and a rigid, White family model.