A Mixed-Methods Approach to Melanin Status: Implications of Light Skin for Women of Color

Abstract

Migration to America has enabled the idealization of light skin, otherwise an alien concept to melanin status for women of color. This alien ideal has social implications impacting women of color's self-esteem, demonstrated via qualitative and quantitative mixed-methods evidence. Implications for women of color are then manifested in the way they perceive, assess, and evaluate their self-potential and hence the quality of life to which they aspire. To educate social scientists about the significance of skin color for melanin status will require the introduction of this concept into the mainstream of social science literature. The viability of social science investigations in an increasingly multi-racial era rests on the willingness of its intelligentsia to accommodate skin color and other alternative issues into the mainstream knowledge base.