Skin color stratification in Israel revisited

Colorism refers to social stratification systems based on skin color. Colorism in Israel is significant because Israel is very ethnically stratified, a fact confirmed by the few scholarly works that have examined the subject. These works, however, do not employ the interests, methods, or key issues of colorism as a distinct academic field. The present study critically analyzes these works through the lenses of colorism scholarship in other national and cultural contexts. We found that existing studies focus on three themes: Jews of Ethiopian descent, with little attention to other groups; processes of attaching values to color categories, rather than the construction of the categories themselves; and the stigmatization by skin color of some marginalized groups.