Shadism

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Prejudice on the basis of skin pigmentation. uncountable

    "Shadism (Staples 2008), a legacy of slavery, is a form of skin tone bias that identifies groups and individuals on the basis of their degree of pigmentation. It is an evaluation of people that minutely registers traits such as skin color, hair, and […]"

Example

More examples

"Shadism (Staples 2008), a legacy of slavery, is a form of skin tone bias that identifies groups and individuals on the basis of their degree of pigmentation. It is an evaluation of people that minutely registers traits such as skin color, hair, and […]"

Etymology

From shade + -ism.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.