Track: Case Studies

Abstract

Colonialism left a big impact on power relations at the social level. One of the most prominent is the ideology of “colorism” which sees a person’s position and ranking based on racial features and skin color, thus created racial hierarchy. The problem is, this indication is still happening today, the lifetime of Generation Z (Gen-Z) who was born in the 21st century, when the world has become increasingly converged by globalization and easy access to information. The “ideology” of colorism still persists by placing the white race as a race that is considered superior and has higher privileges compared to the “indigenous” race. But we wanted to explore whether the same trend holds true for Gen-Z of white and “indigenous” descent. Through the Postcolonial approach, we conducted a survey of 152 respondents and semi-structured interviews of mixed race and “indigenous” people in Jakarta and found that the colorism tendency only applies to those who are fully “white”, but not fully to mixed races. However, this mixed race still gets a lot of benefits from this racial condition, as well as often finds discrimination.

Keywords:

Mixed-race, racial hierarchy, colorism, postcolonialism, colonial mentality