Colorism is biased attitudes or prejudiced treatment of people based on the relative lightness or darkness of their skin in comparison to others of the same race. For as long as we have lived, colorism have always been around. Dating back as early as 1533, a debate arose in Madrid, Spain’s capital, over whether or not descendants of Spanish men and Indian or African women should be acknowledged by the Crown and educated as servant of the empire. Skin color mattered to the Spanish. There was no word for mixed-race people in the Spanish language in the mid-sixteenth century, there was only an official measurement of blood mixture, the Spanish based their definitions of race and social belonging to Limpieza de Sangre, the purity of …show more content…
The Españoles stood at the peak of the social and racial hierarchy. They were white, pure-blooded Europeans, and could prove it, usually by detailed family trees, baptism records, or birth certificates. The Castas, on the other hand, broke into between 5 and 15 Calidad think blood purity progressively based on the percentage of European blood in a given category’s ancestry. The Casta System hierarchy, developed in Mexico City in the 1680s, contained two general groups, each divided into among two and three more precise categories. All of these ancestral categories fell into the same basic social position, they were considered members of society and given certain rights and protections from the government. A color-based hierarchy developed not only within the Casta System but also in society as a whole. Although Spanish law made no distinction between the rights and privileges of any of the mixed-race groups, the groups themselves slowly developed prejudices toward each other, rejecting or accepting individuals as friends, partners, and spouses based largely on skin color and the Casta category to which that individual belonged. Today, colorism isn't as significant as it once was, but still has a substantial importance in the lives of people with color. Many people struggled to identify themselves as black due to the fact of the historical past and how blacks are classified. People who are mixed struggle with their identity and would rather identify as white because it's so-called "better". In the video, blacks are called "ugly" and seem to be classified as a lower status than other. Young children seem to get the impression that this is true which keep colorism