I don’t think I’ve personally ever heard “high yellow” used in an non-ironic context. At any rate, I don’t think it was ever meant in a derogatory way.
Jamaica, especially during the Rastafarian movement in the 70’s.
I think I’ve seen it on runaway slave posters in textbooks, but that’s not exactly recent use.
No, but I imagine it was demeaning. Anyway I was surprised to hear pancakes3 suggest it’s in recent circulation.
Not even close.
Before I retired, I worked with a number of blacks. I often heard them use the term. In fact, I once overheard one of the black guys telling another, " My wife’s family are all high yellows, they call me the darkie".
I thought pancakes3 was ill-informed until I read this particular piece of information that formally established his “street credentials.” Hotlanta. What’ll they think of next?
So being a redneck now is the new upper class?
One could make a decent argument that the United States right now fits the bill.
How so?
Have you done any of the following: applied for a scholarship, tried to get into college, looked for a support group or promotion or networking opportunities at work (in certain industries, specifically in law in my experience)? If so, having darker skin would have made things easier for you.
RIght, I don’t believe that that’s true.
Ain’t that the truth! The prez has a secret Columbia transcipt, and his appointment to the Harvard Law Review is also suspect.
??? It sounds as though you’re conflating affirmative action for (some) darker-skinned people with higher social status for darker-skinned people.
But that’s simply absurd. The only reason that affirmative action programs exist in the first place is because darker-skinned people have traditionally had, and still to some extent have, lower social status than light-skinned people in American society.
Blacks are not America’s high-status ethnic category. Blacks as a group do not possess disproportionately large amounts of wealth, control disproportionately large amounts of power, or stand in culturally and symbolically for American society as a whole. Whites do.
Heck, that’s been made blindingly obvious just this week, with the widespread amazement and awe manifested at the fact of inaugurating a black man as President of the US. The reason so many people think this is such a gobsmackingly amazing historic event is precisely because blacks have historically been a low-status group in the US, and the election of someone from that group to represent the whole of US society in its highest official position is absolutely unprecedented. The election of a white person in that role, on the other hand, is absolutely commonplace and taken for granted.
In short, legally mandated racial preferences to counter the effects of persistent racial discrimination != high social status.
(Moreover, the legally mandated racial preferences in American society operate on the basis of membership in specific socioethnic groups, not on the basis of skin color per se. A dark-skinned child of immigrants from southern India, for example, isn’t a member of a racially disadvantaged group in education and so isn’t eligible for affirmative action consideration in college admissions, even if s/he’s darker-skinned than the average African-American.)
No, it ain’t anything even remotely resembling the truth.
Yes, the US has race-based affirmative action policies that mostly favor darker-skinned people. No, this does not mean that darker-skinned people have higher social status than lighter-skinned people in US society. Equating the two is just sloppy thinking.
I have no idea what you think President Obama’s academic record or the impact of race-based affirmative action policies on his individual career success has to do with this debate. As far as I can see, it’s completely irrelevant.
Even if you gleefully proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the President was a totally unqualified incompetent who would have achieved nothing without unfair advantages from affirmative-action programs, it would be totally beside the point. We’re not talking about legally mandated preferences benefiting dark-skinned racial groups, we’re talking about the social status of dark-skinned people as a category.
You’re more likely to be in college if you’re white.
I knew someone (or everyone) would post exactly this post. I thought about pre-empting it in my original post to this thread but didn’t.
In any event, none of the above applies, and I don’t disagree with the broad strokes of what you are saying. Read my first post in this thread again and pay attention to the question I was responding to. I wasn’t saying anything about social status or social class. I was simply responding to the qustion I quoted. The OP asked lots of different things and I responded to one of those without responding to the others.
Maybe present day South Africa with its affirmative action laws?. I’m not sure about the details but used to hear a lot of college graduates complain that there were no jobs for young white people. Goverment and companies would only hire blacks.
Maybe some of the SA dopers can tell more?
And I think you misunderstood the question you were responding to. Here’s the OP again, in its entirety:
The OP is clearly asking about social status and societal bias, not about legal mechanisms such as affirmative action, which are deliberately instituted to counteract prevalent societal bias.
Once again, affirmative action laws aren’t the same thing as high social status. Affirmative action laws are designed to benefit low-social-status groups.
South African doper here - even amongst Blacks, lighter skin = higher status. Darker skin is more characteristic of West African origin, and immigrants are treated hostilely here. Also, the market for skin lightening products has never gone away.
Yes, there are AA laws, and these have an economic effect but being White or Coloured doesn’t imply lower social status, which was the question. And also within those White & Coloured communities, darker often = lower status.
kimstu, I believe spike404’s post may have been a woosh.
Thing is that, historically, race-based discrimination, as opposed to the one based on wealth, religion or social status, is sort of new. You could say that in the ancient world the Persians looked down on the northern Barbarians, but their race wasn’t actually the factor, and Ancient romans were as likely to have blue-eyed blond slaves as black Africans commanding their legions.
In America, you could claim that the pale-skinned Irish immigrants weren’t well received from the 1800 to the first half of the 20th century. The term “redneck” itself is a slur against them getting easily sunburned while doing manual labour.
Whatever. I posted an answer to a question, which I still stand behind.