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Abstract
This dissertation examines the discursive production of colorism (intra-race gender and skin-color discrimination) in select popular media by using articulation as a theoretical and methodological foundation. Materials examined include Alice Walkers (1983) nonfiction collection In Search of Our Mothers Gardens: Womanist Prose and accompanying literary reviews, a random sample of 133 issues of Essence magazine, and the promotional trailer for the documentary Dark Girls, the films official online promotional materials and sites, and corresponding online responses. The project concludes that a key way colorism is produced discursively is through the articulation of a black womens historically produced politics of respectability within a broader opposition between the private and the public. This articulation inhibits the critical potential of some challenges that have been made to colorism. The study concludes by suggesting ways for progressive challenge to colorism.