Beyond “In the Heights,” colorism persists, rarely addressed

It happened again with “In the Heights,” a big-budget film based on the musical created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, which was called out this week for its dearth of dark-skinned, Black Latinos in leading roles.

Colorism — or discrimination against darker-skinned people within their same ethnic group — lurks deep among pretty much all communities with varying levels of melanin. But it doesn’t get talked about, and that could be a setback for the racial justice efforts that intensified after the police killing of George Floyd last year.

Avoiding the conversation will hinder the battle for racial justice because the two are “fully and inextricably linked,” said Ellis P. Monk, Jr., a sociology professor at Harvard University who has been researching colorism for years.

Monk says the issue is prevalent in all communities of color and has been taboo in part because it’s uncomfortable to talk about internal strife while also fighting against broader discrimination based on race and ethnicity.

“In a way, colorism and skin stone stratification is an even more difficult problem to fix because you could make the argument that everyone is involved in the system of colorism,” Monk said. “If we think about race and racial inequality without taking these skin tone differences seriously, then we’re actually missing how this system of racial inequality works.”