UC Berkeley

This dissertation is the first comparative, mixed-methods study of the social and economic significance of skin tone and hair type as markers of ethnoracial division among African Americans in the U.S. and the Brazilian population as a whole. Using an extended concept of "bodily capital" to capture salient and consequential phenotypical properties, it combines a quantitative analysis of several nationally representative data sets in the U.S. and Brazil with 100 in-depth interviews (50 in each country) (Part III, forthcoming) to show that (1) skin tone is as powerful a basis of intraracial classification and stratification among African Americans as it is within the Brazilian population at large; (2) skin tone and hair type are both powerful markers of social experience and widely perceived to determine differential treatment in intimate, commercial and public spheres alike. These findings are mined to contribute to current debates on the foundations and lived reality of ethnoracial inequality in the two Americas, colorism in global perspective, and theories of group formation.