The Unceasing Significance of Colorism: Empirical Consequences and Theoretical Implications
Hybrid Event
Ellis Monk is a Professor of Sociology at Harvard University and Visiting Faculty Researcher at Google. His award-winning research focuses on the comparative examination of social inequality, especially with respect to race/ethnicity. By deeply engaging with issues of measurement and methodology, it examines the complex relationships between social categories and social inequality; and extends into topics such as social demography, health, aging, race/ethnicity & technology, social psychology, and the sociology of the body.

His current research includes a project on race, skin tone, artificial intelligence, and machine learning; and as a recent recipient of the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, a project on race, skin tone, medical devices, and health disparities. For many decades now, social scientists have documented immense ethnoracial inequalities in the United States.

Much of this work is rooted in comparing the life chances, trajectories, and outcomes of African Americans to White Americans. From health to wealth and nearly every measure of well-being, success, and thriving one can find, White Americans remain ahead of Black Americans. What this focus on ethnoracial inequality between “groups” obscures, however, is long-standing skin tone inequality within groups.

In this talk, Professor Monk provides an overview of key empirical findings on colourism that highlight colourism’s wide-ranging consequences from the labour market to health disparities and technology; and discuss important theoretical implications derived from abstracting the key principles of colourism research, which urge us to consider a different approach to studying social inequality and stratification, more generally, which he refers to as the Infracategorical Model of Inequality.

Please complete the registration form to book your space at the event: forms.office.com/e/dUnZ6MezT8?origin=lprLink

Members of DSPI do not need to register.
Date: 30 November 2023, 16:00 (Thursday, 8th week, Michaelmas 2023)
Venue: 32-42 Wellington Square (Barnett House), 32-42 Wellington Square OX1 2ER
Venue Details: In-person and online
Speaker: Professor Ellis Monk (Harvard University)
Organising department: Department of Social Policy and Intervention
Organiser: Professor Aaron Reeves (Department Of Social Policy And Intervention)
Organiser contact email address: communications@spi.ox.ac.uk
Host: Department of Social Policy and Intervention
Part of: DSPI Seminar Series Michaelmas Term 2023
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: https://forms.office.com/e/dUnZ6MezT8?origin=lprLink
Booking email: communications@spi.ox.ac.uk
Cost: Free
Audience: Public
Editors: Ngwarirai Mandrup, Faith Inch