Excerpt from Term Paper:

...... At first, intermixing between slave and master was undoubtedly met with shame, humiliation, and rage, since such children were the result of rape. However, since the percentage of men who will knowingly commit incest is lower than the percentage of men who will commit rape of any female, the female products of these rapes may have seen an improvement in their circumstances, when compared to other enslaved females. Therefore, the preference for lighter color begins, as mothers notice that their lighter-skinned children are treated a little more favorably than their darker-skinned children. This is not to suggest that lighter-skinned slaves were not treated in an abominable manner, nor that all lighter-skinned slaves received preferential treatment, but there was certainly enough of a difference to make mothers notice this. In fact, the supposed difference in I.Q. between light-skinned and dark-skinned blacks has been proven to be attributable to differences in environment, rather than genetics, supporting the theory that light-skinned blacks received some degree of preferential treatment
Furthermore, the difference in social class systems in the United States and the rest of Latin America helps explain how colorism developed differently in these areas. The United States had a much greater percentage

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