Colorism, Descriptive Representation, and the Representation of African Americans in the United States House of Representatives

Abstract

Previous research overlooks how certain ascribed characteristics, such as skin tone, correlate with the representation of marginalized groups. Yet research also demonstrates how colorism shapes candidate evaluations and life experiences. We theorize that colorism, the systemic privileging of lighter skin, structures the motivations and electoral incentives of Black lawmakers. We hypothesize that darker-skinned Black members of Congress will better represent Black Americans on racialized issues than lighter-skinned Black members, depending on the form of representation: rhetorical or legislative. We test this hypothesis with a combination of human and computer-assisted content analyses of 204,806 press releases and 18,025 bill introductions from the 114th, 115th, and 116th Congresses and a crowdsourced measure of skin tones. We find that on average, darker-skinned Black members of Congress provide more representation in press releases, but not in legislation. Our findings highlight the need to examine diversity among descriptive representatives.