Nina Jablonski: Living Color. The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color

HUMA Book Lunch

Author: Nina G. Jablonski (Center for Human Evolution and Diversity (CHED), United States) 

Introduction: Living Color is the first book to investigate the social history of skin colour from prehistory to the present, showing how our body’s most visible trait influences our social interactions in profound and complex ways. In a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion, Nina G. Jablonski begins with the biology and evolution of skin pigmentation, explaining how skin colour changed as humans moved around the globe. She explores the relationship between melanin pigment and sunlight and examines the consequences of rapid migrations, vacations, and other lifestyle choices that can create mismatches between our skin colour and our environment.
 
Richly illustrated, this book explains why skin colour has come to be a biological trait with great social meaning –  a product of evolution perceived by culture. It considers how we form impressions of others, how we create and use stereotypes, how negative stereotypes about dark skin developed and have played out through history – including being a basis for the transatlantic slave trade. Offering examples of how attitudes about skin colour differ in the U.S., Brazil, India and South Africa, Jablonski suggests that a knowledge of the evolution and social importance of skin colour can help eliminate colour-based discrimination and racism.

See the book: Living Color: The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color (University of California Press, 2014). 

Read Chapters 12–15
Extract made available with the kind permission of the author.

About the author: Nina Jablonski is a biological anthropologist who is recognised for her contributions to the understanding of primate and human evolution, especially to questions not answered directly from the fossil record. Fascinated increasingly over the years by the important but unheralded roles of skin and skin pigmentation in evolution, she focused her research on the origins of mostly naked human skin and diverse human skin colours. In 2000, Jablonski and her collaborator husband, George Chaplin, put forward the dual cline theory (or vitamin D-folate theory) for the evolution of human skin pigmentation that accounts for why dark skin evolved under conditions of high ultraviolet radiation (UVR) in the tropics while lighter skin was favoured under conditions of lower UVR nearer the poles. Jablonski received her A.B. in Biology at Bryn Mawr College and a PhD in Anthropology at the University of Washington. She has held academic positions at the University of Hong Kong, The University of Western Australia, the California Academy of Sciences, and The Pennsylvania State University. She is an elected Member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She has received numerous fellowships and grants, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. In addition to a body of more than 200 peer-reviewed scholarly papers and book chapters, Jablonski has written two popular books for adults: Skin: A Natural History (2006) and Living Color: The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color (2012), and has co-authored two books for children, Skin We Are In (2018) It’s Just Skin, Silly!, which will be published at the end of 2023. Her 2018 children’s book is currently a featured theatre production at the Windybrow Arts Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa. A dedicated public scientist and science educator, Jablonski received an honorary doctorate from the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa in 2010 for her contribution to the worldwide fight against racism.