Race, Colorism, and Social Inequality in Nigeria: Developing an Original Theoretical Framework for Intra-Ethnic Skin Tone Stratification

Colorism, the system of social differentiation based on skin tone gradations within the same racial or ethnic group, has been theoretically developed primarily in American and Caribbean contexts, yet the growing evidence of skin tone stratification dynamics in Nigerian social institutions demands original theoretical development suited to the Nigerian socio-historical context. This doctoral study develops an original theoretical framework for understanding intra-ethnic skin tone stratification in Nigeria, grounded in four years of multi-method research across Lagos, Abuja, and Enugu, examining beauty industries, workplace hiring practices, marriage market dynamics, and media representation systems. Research combined analysis of 1,200 media images from Nigerian television and social media spanning 2019 to 2024, experimental audit studies of skin tone discrimination in employment and social contexts using matched profile designs, eighty-five in-depth interviews about skin tone experience and skin bleaching practice, and ethnographic research in beauty industry spaces. The original theoretical framework, termed Post-Colonial Pigmentocracy, accounts for Nigerian colorism as a historically produced system inheriting colonial associations between lightness and prestige, reproduced through contemporary media economies, marriage preference systems, and workplace aesthetic labour demands, but differentially experienced across ethnic and gender lines in ways that require theorisation beyond American colorism models. Three original theoretical concepts are introduced: beauty-economy extraction describing the bleaching industry's extraction of economic value from colorist anxiety; skin tone capital as a convertible social asset; and colonial chromatic inheritance as the historical mechanism linking contemporary colorism to colonial racial hierarchies. Keywords: colorism, skin tone stratification, post-colonial Nigeria, pigmentocracy, social inequality.