Colour, social perceptions and prejudices

Colour is one of the most important factors to characterise our culture and society. According to research of Fishbein, a young child named Jane has portrayed her friends who are different races and it can be clearly seen that she has very similarly drawn the girls appearances such as hairstyle, stature and clothes except their skin colour. Even though I could not see the girl’s features, they probably do not have exactly same appearances. It possibly shows that colour is very essential element to be characteristic of people. Furthermore, skin colour certainly has restricted people’s rights and forms negative prejudice about them. Terkildsen states that “black candidates with darker skin pigments may be evaluated more negatively than black politicians with lighter skin colour particularly when seeking higher status office or seats in predominantly white electoral districts.”

In the same way, some people tend to avoid and reject albinos with social perceptions and prejudices. For example, Pullan family are the largest family with albinism in the world and are currently living in India. Unfortunately, they are not accepted to others and they have been struggling and feel isolated, because they have very different skin colour with other normal Indians. Moreover, they cannot easily find jobs and people who may marry them. For this reason, the father is the only person who has a job and they married with another person with albinism. There is another example of harsh life of people with albinism. Some people used Negro albinos as their entertainment in the past. According to Martin, “normal people held shows and the owner dyed the hair of albino African American and dressed them in oriental costume to pass as Circassian Beauties.” They traded on scarcity of Negro albinos’ skin colour in order to make money. I have focused on this relationship between colour and social perceptions which is caused by differences with others. Accordingly, I produced the final outcome to highlight this contrast of skin colour.