Race, Skin Colour

In May 2020, the Crayola Crayon Company released a new version of their crayon box that specifically focuses on skin tone. This was met with mass media attention in part due to marketing and business partnerships which touted the concept of skin tone crayons as new, although their last release of a skin tone box was in 1994. Not only was this crayon box made to promote creativity for children, it was specifically designed to foster inclusivity. The crayons designed to promote acceptance were made for a large audience of children at school and home, although anti-racism education is infrequently taught in the classroom. Crayola called the crayon box "Colors of the World", and it was printed in 3 languages. The skin hues that were created displayed new names like almond and rose. From an anti-oppressive lens set in America, both the name on the box and on the crayons caused questions for concern. While the idea of having many skin tone colors to choose from was a wonderful concept, the messaging called for scrutiny. Before giving the entire "Colors of the World" box to children or sharing about its release on social media, it is important to look more extensively into the subtle and maybe not so understated indications of White Nationalism, Colorism, and Colonization.

In May 2020, the Crayola Crayon Company released a new version of their crayon box that specifically focuses on skin tone. This was met with mass media attention in part due to marketing and business partnerships which touted the concept of skin tone crayons as new, although their last release of a skin tone box was in 1994. Not only was this crayon box made to promote creativity for children, it was specifically designed to foster inclusivity. The crayons designed to promote acceptance were made for a large audience of children at school and home, although anti-racism education is infrequently taught in the classroom. Crayola called the crayon box "Colors of the World", and it was printed in 3 languages. The skin hues that were created displayed new names like almond and rose. From an anti-oppressive lens set in America, both the name on the box and on the crayons caused questions for concern. While the idea of having many skin tone colors to choose from was a wonderful concept, the messaging called for scrutiny. Before giving the entire "Colors of the World" box to children or sharing about its release on social media, it is important to look more extensively into the subtle and maybe not so understated indications of White Nationalism, Colorism, and Colonization.

The occurrence of the 2019-2021 global pandemic has revealed the discriminatory sentiment between the variance of "white" tints to "black" tones as an idealistic conspiracy. The propaganda of the west and its colonial inferiors who are outside the US-Europe sphere are targets of this discrimination and they are addressed as People Of Colour and Black, Indigenous People Of Colour. This has positioned the possibility of all races for a united world under risk as it has caused a psychological partition in considering synergy and ties in cultural and intellectual world. The vision of a futuristic world is laid on progressive attitude which caused the reactions of the black lives matter and the mimicry of the white lives matter. The movie black panther which is popularized by the revolutionary scuffle of the movements has revealed the superiority of the black race. This suggests the divergent metamorphosis of tradition-related activities of diverse communities by their race. These new concepts queued above identified as slurs potentially predicts more a closer problem or a closer solution. Therefore, this article is expository for the course of denouncing the colour segregation that has prevailed from time immemorial as the title suggests; All People are Of Colour: a palette exposition.

This article represents a critical history of the destiny of the original 1949  "flesh" colour crayon in the Binney and Smith Collection of Crayola crayons between the nineteen-sixties and the present.  In this paper, I examine the retirement of "flesh" and its replacement with "Peach," in 1962 as a result of the Civil Rights Movement protest about how "flesh" did not represent dark skin tones.  I show the relationship between artistic  tools of visual representation for children, the cognitive development of their ideas about skin colour, and the ways in which Crayola adapted to social diversity norms in the school curriculum in the United States by launching a Multicultural Crayon/Marker/art product collection in 1992.  After defining my original concept of cognitive equity, I argue that current art technologies and visual portrayal practices should represent a wider range of skin tones.  In conclusion, my work suggests two strategies that would better enable children to develop racial and cognitive equity: (1) design technologies, images, and products so that it becomes easier to capture and reproduce a continuum of skin tones without having to resort to (often unsatisfactory) methods of compensation; and (2) develop a wider range of skin-colour norms in body representations, so that this broad range itself becomes the standard, the new norm, for portraying and depicting bodies in the arts, in business, and in all media—whether virtual or two- or three-dimensional—for portraying and depicting bodies.

Until recently, due to a light-skin bias embedded in colour film stock emulsions and digital camera design, the rendering of non-Caucasian skin tones was highly deficient and required the development of compensatory practices and technology improvements to redress its shortcomings. Using the emblem-atic " Shirley " norm reference card as a central metaphor reflecting the changing state of race relations/aesthetics, this essay analytically traces the colour adjustment processes in the industries of visual representation and identifies some pro-totypical changes in the field. The author contextualizes the history of these changes using three theoretical categories: the 'technological unconscious' (Vaccari, 1981), 'dysconsciousness' (King, 2001), and an original concept of 'cognitive equity,' which is proposed as an intelligent strategy for creating and promoting equity by inscribing a wider dynamic range of skin tones into image technologies, products, and emergent practices in the visual industries.

Abstract: Until recently, due to a light-skin bias embedded in colour film stock emulsions and digital camera design, the rendering of non-Caucasian skin tones was highly deficient and required the development of compensatory practices and technology improvements to redress its shortcomings. Using the emblematic
“Shirley” norm reference card as a central metaphor reflecting the changing state of race relations/aesthetics, this essay analytically traces the colour adjustment processes in the industries of visual representation and identifies some prototypical changes in the field. The author contextualizes the history of these changes using three theoretical categories: the ‘technological unconscious’
(Vaccari, 1981), ‘dysconsciousness’ (King, 2001), and an original concept of ‘cognitive equity,’ which is proposed as an intelligent strategy for creating and promoting equity by inscribing a wider dynamic range of skin tones into image technologies, products, and emergent practices in the visual industries.
Keywords:  Colour balance; Norm reference cards; Dynamic range; Technological unconscious; Dysconsciousness; Cognitive equity; Cultural studies

This essay focuses on Binney and Smith's creation and marketing of Crayola fleshtone art products from the late 1950s until the mid-1990s, analyzing the company's shifting nomenclature--from "flesh" to "peach" to its multicultural collection. After reflecting on the significance of Crayola's color adjustment for children's sociocultural and aesthetic development and for teacher's pedagogical repertoires around diversity issues, I introduce an original notion--cognitive equity. I propose this as a refined way of understanding racial and cultural equity issues that don't just revolve around statistics and access to institutions, but also inscribes a new normative vision of skin color equity directly into technologies, products, and body representations in a range of visual media. At the very early stage of children's cognitive development when stereotypes and racisms are being formed, this would be a particularly intelligent design strategy in which to reinforce multiculturalism and multiracialism in all aspects of their visual culture and the commodities that are available to them.

I had a classmate while doing my Ph.D. He was the best in his class, better than the gringos 1 and other foreigners, but when you see him you think: 'In Mexico, they wouldn't give a penny for this guy'. Because he was the typical Mexican: short, morenito 2 , skinny … I mean like ... very insignificant physically. (Paulina, 49, Mexico City) Beauty, appearance, and racialized perceptions of skin colour, as 'regimes of difference' (Ahmed 1998), are notions that inform each other within specific social and historical configurations. In this chapter I will explore the workings of such regimes within the specific configurations of Mexicanness and mestizaje (racial mixing) 3 . How do these regimes of difference collide 'differently'? Is there an unequal basis on which they operate? These questions will guide us in a discussion of the relationship between skin colour, beauty, visibility and racial discourses, as well as the accumulation of meaning that such ideas have in their empirical experience. This analysis draws from a research project concerned with the 'quality' of contemporary practices of racism in Mexico in relation to discourses of mestizaje, 'race' and nation. Through focus group discussions and life-story interviews based on family photograph albums, I explored how the women who participated in this study understand and experience their racialized, gendered and classed bodies and national identity in a context where racism has been rendered Moreno Figueroa, M. G. (2012) ''Linda Morenita': Skin Colour, Beauty and the Politics of Mestizaje in Mexico' in C. Horrocks (ed.) Cultures of Colour: Visual, Material, Textual (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books); 167-180. 2