The North Star
Welcome to The North Star—a podcast produced by the Oberlin Center for DEI Innovation and Leadership, and a space for candid conversations on leadership, legacy, and navigating complexity.
In each episode, we’ll talk with changemakers, scholars, and disruptors who are asking bold questions and reimagining what leadership looks like—in education, in community, and in the world we’re building next.
Whether you’re leading a team, building a movement, or just trying to make sense of today’s challenges, The North Star is your companion for reflection, insight, and action.
The North Star
Beyond Beauty: A Conversation on Colorism and Redefining Social Capital with Dr. Margaret Hunter
In this episode, JeffriAnne Wilder, PhD welcomes Margaret Hunter, PhD, professor of sociology and strategic advisor for faculty DEI initiatives at Santa Clara University, for a candid conversation about nearly three decades of research and advocacy surrounding colorism, racial justice, and institutional transformation. Dr. Hunter’s pioneering work illuminates how skin tone, beauty cues, and social capital operate within communities of color, and why colorism remains a multidimensional force shaping opportunity, belonging, and self-image. Together, they dissect the complexities of racism and colorism, the impact of pop culture and social media, and the challenges and hope presented by Gen Z’s unapologetic approach to equity, boundaries, and self-worth.
Find out more: Color Stories: Black Women and Colorism in the 21st Century by JeffriAnne Wilder, PhD
🔗 Find out more about Dr. JeffriAnne Wilder.
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🌎Visit Oberlin College's website.
Podcast Produced by: Paradigm Media Group
Welcome to the North Star. I'm Dr. Jeffrey Ann Wilder, Executive Director of the Oberlin Center for DEI Innovation and Leadership. This season, we're exploring disruption, those transformative moments when scholars and leaders challenge what society takes for granted. Nearly 10 years have passed since the release of my book, Color Story, Black Women and Colorism in the 21st Century. And to honor this milestone, I'm joined by colleague and friend, Dr. Margaret Hunter, Professor of Sociology and Strategic Advisor for DEI initiatives at Santa Clara University. Dr. Hunter is a trailblazer in colorism studies, author of Race, Gender, and the Politics of Skin Tone, and one of the foremost voices on how colorism operates within communities of color and across generations. Her work interrogates how skin tone shapes access, beauty, belonging, and opportunity, and what it means to pursue equity in a world shaped by both racism and colorism. Welcome so much, Dr.
unknown:Hunter.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. Thanks for the invitation to be here and talk with you.
SPEAKER_00:So it really is a pleasure. And we actually saw each other a few months ago at the American Sociological Association. It had been a really long time since I had been essays, but I had the opportunity to be there because you hosted a panel session on the future of colorism and the workplace. And I have to say, it was, to be honest, one of the highlights of my career to be in conversation at the ASA's at a panel, invited panel, I might add, by you. So thank you so much for that. And before we get into your work on colorism, I have to, if you wouldn't mind, I should have to share a story that I shared at ASA about how meaningful your work has been for me over the course of my career as a sociologist. So while I was a graduate student, and it's been some years since I was a graduate student, I always knew that I wanted to study colorism because it was something that I learned about as an undergraduate student at Allegheny College, and it was so very intriguing to me. And when I learned about colorism sociologically, right? So I'm a black woman, so I knew about colorism just as a black person. But when I learned about colorism as a sociologist, I wanted to know as much as I could. So I tried to find as much as I could find out about colorism. And I wanted to soak it up like a sponge, right? There anything about colorism that any person had written sociologically or really, really anything, I wanted to know as much as I could. And so when I got into my master's degree program, I wanted to explore that for my master's thesis. And I was so excited to sort of jump right in. And I got, I remember, I'll never forget, being in my advisor's office at an unnamed university in the Department of Sociology, and just being so excited to share with my advisor that I already knew what I was going to study, right? I was going to study colorism, and this is why I wanted to study it. And these are all the people that I've already learned about. I'm so excited to learn more. And my advisor kind of stopped me, sort of in my tracks, really interrupted me, disrupted me, and said, no, you can't study that because colorism isn't sociological. And this person literally took the wind out of me, knocked the wind out of me, right? Was so devastated to hear those words. Colorism isn't sociological. And I just, I knew better, right? Because I had already read all these people, folks that looked like me who were studying colorism, who had studied colorism from Du Bois and on many, many years prior to. And this person told me, no, you can't do that. And I decided that, first of all, that person was wrong because I knew I knew better, and that that really wasn't the best space for me. But I made the decision in that moment that I was not going to be deterred by someone who really didn't know, right, what colorism was in a sociological context, and that I needed to be in a space with other people who actually knew that. So I decided that I had to finish that program. It was a terminal master's degree program. I had to finish that program. So I had to do my master's thesis on something else because I had to finish that program and get out of that program so I can go study and finish my PhD somewhere else and be in a space where I could. And what got me through that program and what got me through finishing my doctorate elsewhere at the University of Florida was people like you. We had never met until a few months ago. But we want to go all the way back to really the fall of 2000. It's the fall of 2025 right now. So we've rewind the tape 25 years. It was people like you and your work on colorism who I knew. There are people who are doing this work in sociology. It's just that that person who told me that colorism wasn't sociological hadn't read your work and didn't know about you. But it was the community of scholars, of people who I hadn't met, but I could read and had access to, that really kept my light going. So I want to say thank you. I had the opportunity to thank you in Chicago at the ASAs, but I want to take this opportunity to say thank you again for doing that work, for continuing to do the work, because I think that's why we do this work as sociologists, right? Because it is so very important to bring the work that we do from the margins to the center. So thank you. I believe in giving folks their flowers while they're still here, right? Because your work in colorism is so in private. So now that I've spent, I don't know, a really long time telling that really long story, but to thank you for doing that work. And so what I want to ask, because that was a really long tee up to this question, what got you to the point? I my book is called Color Stories. And so I'm really interested in what got you so interested sociologically in colorism, and what brought you into that sociological exploration of skin tone among women and folks of color.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Thank you, Jeffrey. And I really appreciate you kind of tracing your own intellectual history. And I'm I'm humbled to be a part of it for sure. And as you were talking about the the obstacles and the kind of lack of sociological imagination of some of the prior mentors or thesis advisors or whatever, it really did make me think about how lucky I was to have the advisor I had in graduate school. My advisor was Walter Allen. He's a professor now of education, but then of sociology. And he was just a really is just a tremendous, tremendous person, scholar, et cetera. And I came to graduate school with an interest in colorism, but I was interested in a lot of things about race. And so there was a kind of serendipity because he was working on a project and he was interested in doing some analysis of some existing data that had a skin color variable. And that really kind of solidified our working relationship on skin color. And that led to those probably early publications that you read way back then. Yeah. I was really grateful to participate in. So, yeah, how did I get interested in this? I'm a mixed-race person, black and white. And I grew up in a pretty black and white city in Toledo, Ohio, with a black father and a white mother. And I think my experience growing up was there, I was around a lot of black folks, and I was around a number of white folks also. And I think my sense of race was sort of shaped by that. And I also, especially by high school, I think, but even earlier, was really attuned to the privileges of light skin that I felt like I was experiencing, especially in relation to other black women who were close friends who are darker than me. Just in terms of simple things like who's asked to represent our school at some kind of public event, or who was asked to give their remarks to the class, you know, those kinds of things. And then I think what we all are very attuned to are the complicated color dynamics in the dating experience, especially for heterosexual young people, but for everyone to the extent that the beauty regime is deeply invested in colorism. And that's as part of what I've written about over the years. So I think sort of my own personal background combined with a deep intellectual interest in race on all topics has kind of kept me in this space. But I remember also having some moments of real discouragement over the years on this topic as well. I remember when I was finishing my book and arguing with the press about what the title should be. And I wanted it to be color struck, colon, something, something, something sociological. And I remember that they were really like, no one's gonna know what your book is about. People are gonna think it's like an art history book. And it was such a sense of like, this topic is niche. No one's gonna really know what this is. And it was a real kind of minimization that I was really frustrated with. I lost that battle and I ended up with a very, as you now know, direct and bland title. But I think there's there have been over the years lots of opportunities for people to want to push this to the side for various reasons. Though I would say in the past couple of decades, I mean, the amount of work in this field has just exploded, and it's been really wonderful and enriching to read how much more we now understand it beyond our sort of own personal experiences and anecdotes and stuff. Like the level of sociological understanding is just really incredible now.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I recall while we were at the ASA's at the panel, there was the QA session, and there was a doctoral student who during the QA stood up and a comment about, and it wasn't disparaging in any way, shape, or form, but in her critique of sort of the current research on colorism, I think she said something about the current scholarship being sociologically shallow, which I I found to be very, it was like very refreshing, right? It was like, oh wow, that's that's it's kind of nice, right? To get to the point where someone like we've got enough literature out there for someone to say, y'all not doing enough, right? That it's actually kind of cool, right? Like, oh, that's nice. You know, to get at this point, like pushing us to to do like to do more. Well, there still isn't a whole lot out there, right? But to get to that point where someone is really pushing us beyond, like, that's great. We've talked enough about beauty. You've talked enough about beauty standards and black-white things, but like you need to get a little bit deeper. We could sort of take a step back, because I feel like we sort of started our conversation within just, you know, heavily entrenched within sociology for folks who like us who are sociologists, sort of take a step back for people who may not be sociologists and and are are listening to this conversation. What are the major differences between, and you said you kind of stumbled into sociology because, or excuse me, stumbled into colorism because there are tons of things that interest interest you as a race scholar? What are the the sort of main differences for folks who may not understand the difference between racism and colorism, right? What are those main key differences there, right? Because obviously they're connected, but then there are also some really there's some nuances there and some distinctions. How do everyday people make those nuances, make those distinctions and but also make those separations between racism and colorism? And how do people understand the difference there?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, I tend to think about race as and racism as a problem of category. So there's a lot of different ways that people are black and they experience their blackness in many different ways, and they're all in the category of black. And I feel like colorism is one of the kind of embodied experiences of blackness. And I think it really matters. And it's I'll use myself as an example. I identify as black, my dad is black, my mom is white. Sometimes people think I'm black, sometimes they don't. Kind of depends on the context that I'm in or the state that I'm in. And so my experiences of racism exist, and they're also different than the experiences of racism of other black people who might be darker than me. And so I like to think of it like there's some commonalities. We are all experiencing anti-Black racism at the hands of the new federal administration, for example. On the other hand, the ways that we experience it differ a lot by class, by educational status, by region of where we live, by skin tone, by gender. So I've I see it as one dimension of how we experience racism and a particularly embodied dimension of that. I'm curious about how you think about it as someone who's been deep in this work for so long as well.
SPEAKER_00:So to me, they are, of course, part and parcel, right? So you cannot colorism is a byproduct of racism, right? So it is a piece of that, maybe a intended or unintended consequence of that, right? So it's a sort of an offspring of that, if you will. So it's a connection of it. So I think about it as an extension of that. I also think about colorism like racism, just sort of having different sort of manifestations and and sort of forms, right? A lot of times what I find so fascinating about colorism, and to me, one of the things I've been very, very fascinated about and very interested in, is really wanting more people to think about colorism from a theoretical perspective, right? Spend more time thinking about the manifestations of colorism theoretically, right? And and you spend a lot of time thinking about the conceptualizations of colorism, right? So to to to for us to think about like how colorism happens and how it functions and operates more the various ways in which that happens as opposed to the experiences of it, right? Because we know it happens all the time. My biggest thing has always been let's spend more time thinking about the ways in which this occurs, right? And and look at look at colorism, not necessarily from a one-dimensional, but from a multidimensional sort of multitude of experiences and things as opposed to yeah, it's this light skin, dark skin thing. It's so much larger than that, it's so much bigger than that, right? I I'm blanking on the individual who coined the term white colorism, right? But it's very fascinating, right, when you think about because a lot of times it as long as I've been studying and talking about colorism, people that the number one retort that I've heard, and I'm sure you've heard something very similar, when you talk about colorism, right, people say, ha ha. Okay, so now we know that folks of color do this to each other, then it's something that like white folks are now off the hook. No, not at all. Absolutely not. This is something that everyone participates in, right? So let's get into that a little bit more, right? But you know, everyone participates in upholding colorism in the same way that folks participate in reinforcing and upholding racism, right? It's another layer to racism as well. So I think that's super duper fascinating. I just I think that we can't have there, there's never too many conversations that you can have about colorism because there's just so much that folks don't realize is colorism, right? If we could just I'd love to, I'd love to hear sort of one of the maybe one or two of the most fascinating questions that you get when you when you talk about or you lecture on colorism. What what what are some of the common things that you get from people when they first learn about colorism?
SPEAKER_01:I get the question or the the I actually don't usually get it as a direct question, but more like an implicit kind of accusation, which is I think what you're getting at. The like, oh, well, if you all do it to each other, then that's really on you. That's not on us, right? As white people. And so sometimes that comes up. And I I think one of the ways that I often talk about that when I'm giving a public talk is that the level of a white engagement with colorism is so significant. And the evidence for that are these huge sociological outcomes that we can see. Like if it was just black people messing with each other, we wouldn't see these big income gaps and gaps in educational attainment and the housing market. Like, those are things that white people must be engaged in to create that kind of outcome. So I I try to help disabuse people of their sense of like, oh, this is on you all. This isn't, this is your dirty laundry, this isn't. Because I think for white folks, their sense of their own racism is becoming more clear to them. I think that their sense of their engagement with colorism is less obvious to them. And so I think that's easier for them to miss it. And it it's, and this maybe is getting at what you're saying about like the conceptualization of colorism. Like this idea that lighter skinned women are just prettier or darker skinned men are just more dangerous is so deeply embedded in our cultural consciousness in the US that I think a lot of people don't realize the distinctions that they're making, even when they're a little bit more familiar with their sort of racial distinctions by category. Yeah. And then the the other thing that comes up quite a bit when I give these kinds of talks, and even in my own research came up quite a bit, is the real and I've wrestled with how to approach this. So I I love to kind of get your feedback on it too. But a lot of people will who are light-skinned, sometimes mixed race, sometimes not, will share deep pain about a sense of being disconnected, ostracized, minimized as parts of the black community. And they feel a lot of hurt and feelings around it. And so there's a kind of way that they want that to be in the conversation on colorism. And sometimes they think therefore it's all kind of equal, equal on both sides. And you see the exhale you just gave. And that's been my reaction also, and I've thought along I feel like I've leaned toward minimizing over the years, like, but there is something there for people in how they hear it. And so I've written in some of my own work about the difference between material discrimination and sort of affective discomfort, which I think is where the feelings are. And I'm not minimizing those feelings in the sense that they exist. We all know that those things happen sometimes. I've experienced that myself sometimes, but that's not quite the same level of systematic material discrimination. So that comes up sometimes in my work. And if I'm giving a public talk, sometimes it's a teary testimonial after the talk. And so it can be difficult to kind of bring that back into the conversation.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's definitely something that has has resonated a great deal for me throughout my research. Actually, I just thought about throughout the data collection process. And I was actually just sharing this with a student a couple of weeks ago. I was going to, I started off doing in-depth interviews. And I thought that was like, okay, this is the best way for me to gather my data. And I learned pretty quickly that was just a not the best idea because for whatever reason, the dynamic, and I'm brown skin, right? At least that's how I I think that's how I show up to the most people. But for whatever reason, it was creating a very interesting dynamic. And I thought it was probably better. So I ended up doing focus groups. And when I was doing focus groups, I didn't really think at the time about the composition of the focus groups. So I learned very like one focus group in. Oh, this is not a good idea to have mixed skin tone focus groups. It went left real quick, straight out the gate. Like, this was not like, thank you all so much for coming. We're gonna get back together another time. It just was not, it did not end well. And I had to like retool. Okay, we had to figure out a way to get everyone in the focus group who was similarly skin toned, right? I mean, and you can even assume, can't assume that everyone who is brown skin or identifies as brown skin or the same levels of brown skin is gonna have to, but to your point, it was just not, it's not the same levels or perceived levels of experience across skin tone variations. And that's a very hard thing to broach, repair, heal. It's very, very difficult. And then this, I never really ended up publishing um this data. And I thought at some point I'd come back to it, and then gosh, here we are 15, 20 years later. Mother, daughter experiences, particularly when you have moms and daughters who are different, skin talked and that sort of thing. That's pretty fascinating. And at this point, the the folks who I interviewed are older millennials, right? And so now you get Gen Z. So these folks are like in their 40s and nobody cares about us about them anymore. But yeah, I mean, the focus, I mean, they're not young anymore, right? The focus is now all on Gen Z. But you're absolutely right. This sort of experiences that folks have and and what folks deem as I don't want to put pain in quotes because that's that's not fair. But there are varying percepts perceptions about levels of pain across that spectrum, which is all real and valid, but it is just there are varying levels of that, which is very interesting. And there's just so many dynamics to colorism that I don't even think that we haven't even scratched the surface on. We just we just haven't. And then when you think about strictly skin tone, okay, let's talk about skin tone and hair. And I mean, there are just all these different variants there. And I have two girls, and I write about at least in my book, my oldest daughter was uh born. My youngest daughter is four, so she wasn't born, but you know, just having my oldest daughter and all the comments that people made about my daughter. My youngest daughter is uh lighter skin tone and just so many, it's just so fascinating. Very, very fascinating. We gotta collect some more data. It's very, very interesting.
SPEAKER_01:I think it would be interesting to do a project on this sort of and I'm sure some people have, but that really focuses on the sort of affective experiences of colorism. Because I think I my gut feeling is like what's happened is that light-skinned women in particular have kind of cornered the market on the affective part, and that it's sort of like the pain of being misunderstood as stuck up because you're light-skinned and you think you're better, is somehow equated to the pain of being minimized and excluded because you're darker. And I'm not sure those two things are quite equal, even though it's interesting to explore them both. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know if you saw Light Girls, Dark Girls and Light Girls, those two documentaries. I got to be involved in Light Girls, and I really, really, really liked Dark Girls a lot. And I thought it was really well done and interesting. And Light Girls, I liked aspects of it, and then parts of it I thought I didn't love as much. And that was one part of it, is that I felt like there was um focus on the sort of equating of like two sides of the same coin, like the grass is always greener. And I I don't think that they probably intended to do it that way, but it felt like that a little bit to me. And I felt like they sort of focused on some extreme stories of negative things that had happened to some light-skinned celebrities. And I think also the fact that in light girls, most of the people they interviewed were celebrities. And in dark girls, most of the people I interviewed were regular people. And I mean, that in and of itself is the the sociological answer right there about the way privilege works around color.
SPEAKER_00:And that's incredibly problematic. And now that I'm and now that you said that, I'm I'm recalling it now. And it is a bit problematic. Well, it's more than a bit problematic, right? Let's just name that. And if you think about, so now you insert social media and this whole popular culture aspect around that, which is something that I've been very, very interested in as it, and I'm sure you have been too, as it relates to how colorism itself sort of is how it lives, right? So how colorist messages get out and sort of get replayed a lot on social media. I think that really that aspect of it gets out quite a bit. And you think about just beyond social media, music lyrics and those things, I think get played out even more. And I think it would be such a fascinating thing to explore even further. But they are not the same, right? It is not the same. You have to be very, very careful when you start. You cannot conflate the two. They're just not. They are not the same. And it's a very it does even more damage to the experiences of darker skinned women.
SPEAKER_01:That's right. I I agree with you 100%. I mean, in regard to social media, I mean, there's so much to say, but one of the things I got really interested in a few years ago was the use of filters. Oh, wow. Yeah, marketed as sort of beauty filters, but really just opportunities to lighten, brighten, whiten one's skin. There there were so many. I mean, just thousands upon thousands upon thousands created in all different apps and all different platforms. It was really fascinating. And this kind of like brushing it under the rug as just one more sort of beauty tool was really wild to me.
SPEAKER_00:So, for those folks who may not know, one of your earlier ideas, specifically within the context of colorism, is that. That light skin functions as a form of social capital, and that for women of color, they they form this notion of a light skin, sort of forms this idea of a beauty cue, and that women fall along the beauty cue, and that light skin falls at the top of the beauty cue. Would you would you mind unpacking those two ideas for us?
SPEAKER_01:When I first wrote about light skin as social capital, especially for women, I was really trying to argue with data that being lighter skinned is like a resource to have on the dating and marriage market. And so it functions the way a college degree functions or middle class status functions, that it puts you up higher and makes you more competitive for more elite partners. And I think that was something that people talked about casually, kind of colloquially, but there wasn't really much data for, or at least no one had really like looked at it. And once we started looking at it, it was like, oh wow, you can actually see this in the survey data. Like it was to me, I was blown away by that. And from there, I argued about this idea of the beauty cue, like a cue meaning like a line, that in a patriarchal racist society like the United States, women's appearance matters tremendously in their marriage ability or date ability, and their bodies have this outweighed importance in their own status. And so there's like a cue of the most desirable women, highest status women by beauty at the top and lower at the bottom, and that skin color plays a big role in this ranking. So that you might not have a college degree, but if you have light skin, that puts you up high, right? And that was the kind of argument that I was making. We already can see very clearly a racial aspect to what I would call a duty cue, where white women are seen as highly desirable and beautiful and women of color less so. But even among women of color, I think there's a cue there that operates. And I mean, the evidence for it is all around us, from who was your homecoming queen at your school to who's on the television, to who's an Instagram baddie. I mean, all of it is the same and everybody looks sort of similar. And then I would argue with the increasing investment in cosmetic procedures and other kinds of things that our ability to purchase racial capital has just gotten bigger and bigger. So maybe you weren't at the top of the queue by birth, but hey, you can get some filler in the right places and do some procedures and get your nose done and your eyes and move yourself right up. And I'm not saying it, and this is an important point that I usually make whenever I'm giving a talk, is like I'm not saying it in a judgmental way, like, oh, all these people are trying to do cosmetic procedures. What I'm saying is these are rational acts in a society that really values women's bodies in certain kinds of ways. So why, why wouldn't you try to lighten your skin? And why wouldn't you maybe take some even potential big risks in order to do that? Why wouldn't you get your nose done? Why wouldn't you have your lips done, your your eyelids, you know, et cetera, et cetera? That these are these aren't acts of vanity, these are acts of rational upward social mobility in a society that overvalues women's bodies.
SPEAKER_00:I'm so glad you brought that up because you know I was gonna ask you. That's like my next question. Because what about, you know, um, you know, we live in a BBL culture and a plastic surgery culture from Cardi B to Lotto to just pick a housewife regardless of their their location, whether they're in Potomac or Atlanta or Jersey or what have you. I mean, we and regardless of their their their race, right? Everyone seems to be doing that. You know, where is the colorism? If we're sort of thinking about pulling out and teasing out the colorism there, not necessarily the colorism, but if we're we're sort of teasing out the aspects of maybe the the skin tone pieces or the the the social capital, the skin tone is the social capital, because we don't necessarily know if colorism is there. Well, listen, we know it's there. We know it's there. It's always there. Some ladies on Potomac. But anyway, if we're to sort of insert that into those pieces, where does where does the conversation lead us then?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I mean I really think that these shows, these various kinds of shows, various kinds of reality TV shows in particular, have really normalized the manipulation of the body in capitalism, really. I mean, it is it is a way of viewing the body as another natural resource to be mined and manipulated for economic gain. And and again, I'm not casting aspersions on individual people, like this is a cultural phenomenon as part of the structure of the way our society is. So people are making rational decisions within it, but those decisions also have complications and they have implications for everyone. So I do feel like one of the things I'll hear from people sometimes is like, hey, you know what? If you got a cream that makes your skin lighter or makes your hair straighter, or you want to get your nose done or whatever, like good for you. Like, get that bag. Like, you got to do what you gotta do to survive. I don't agree with that. And I'll tell you why. Because when you do that as an individual, you are reinforcing a system that makes it harder for everybody else. So, like, okay, celebrity ex, go ahead and do all those things. But that means that all the other people who are dark skinned, who have big lips, who have wide noses, the all the Asian women who have an eye who have don't have an eyelid fold, you are reinforcing a devaluation of those bodies. And so I feel like, yeah, you can do it and you can benefit from it, but it isn't without effects on everybody else. And if you're willing to take that, fine, that's okay. But I don't think we should delude ourselves into acting like it doesn't affect anybody else.
SPEAKER_00:Especially for younger people, right? Especially people like me who have teenagers who are still trying to like make their way or figure this all out, who aren't quite yet there as far as coming of age, who don't really have that all figured out. I think that definitely, or just everyday folks who are still trying to figure though all of those things out. Gosh, I just, man, I wish we had more time. Time. Gosh, I think we need a part two at some point. I just wish we had more time because this is literally my favorite topic, right? So I do want to ask you one other question before we we we kind of wrap, and that's really what do you think is the most noticeable thing that's different about today's college students? So, how would you characterize Gen Z? How are they the most different compared to earlier generations?
SPEAKER_01:I feel like people tease me when I say this, but I love Gen Z. I just feel like I've been doing some research and leading a research team of Gen Z researchers about their experiences in college. So I've been spending a little bit of time on this, and I just feel like Gen Z is telling Gen X, and that's my generation. Y'all need to hold on a minute. And like they're just, I feel like they just really give us a reality check. Like, why are you working yourselves to death? For what? And I mean, they're like, we give them a hard time, like, oh, Gen Z, like they don't want to work, whatever. Why I I think what they're saying to us is, am I working my fingers to the bone for not that much money in a company I'm not sure I believe in any way, and giving up much of my life and my health for it? And I think for us in Gen X, like that hurts because it cuts a little close to the bone. Like, ooh, Gen Z college students, they don't want to work for free. You want them to deal with racial issues at the university and help be part of the solution, fine, but you better pay them. Pay them. But I feel like they've really touched on things that prior generations have overlooked or not thought of or minimized, and they don't like to put up with a lot of emotional mess. I feel like they'll be like, go to therapy. Because this is a generation who are much more familiar with therapy than like their parents' generation, right? So I've raised two gents years. I have a 22-year-old and a 19-year-old, so I am well versed in their criticisms of our generation. But I really do deeply appreciate them. I really do. And I feel like I learn a lot from my students, and I'm grateful really to be interacting with them on a regular basis.
SPEAKER_00:They're like they're old souls, but and they will get you together now. They will get you together with it. Thank you. Yeah. I I completely agree with that. They are not afraid to tell you like that you need to get it together.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. But you do have to pay them. I completely agree with that. Yeah. I literally just went through that a couple weeks ago. Oh, yeah. But um, here's my rate. Like, oh, that oh, okay. Let me look at my budget.
SPEAKER_01:Let's see what I can do. I did all kind of free work as an undergrad. And when I look back, I'm like, why did I do that? I mean, I just yes, absolutely for free.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Two, no, three rapid fire questions. We always end with three rapid fire questions. Ready? Something that's made you smile big this week. I was saying this week. It is Monday. So something that has made you smile big this month. We'll say that this month.
SPEAKER_01:My daughter was just home from college over the weekend visiting, and seeing your children grow and their increased sense of self-awareness and efficacy in the world will just bring you to your knees with joy.
SPEAKER_00:Every time I ask that question, every time, the person responds with family. Every single time. Oh, that's good. At least okay. Something that keeps you up at night.
SPEAKER_01:Impending authoritarianism, anti-immigrant, anti-trans agenda. Yeah, that that is really keeping me up at night.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. For sure. And as we look ahead at the next uh, let's say the next generation of colorism research. What questions do you think still demand our attention?
SPEAKER_01:I think there's still a lot to be done around colorism in the criminal justice system. And I feel like that like stuff around criminal justice and sociology in general has really taken off over the past like 15 years or so. So I'm really looking forward to seeing more and more work there. And then I think the other piece is gonna be around manipulation of the body, you know, increased use of um cosmetic procedures and AI. I think those will be the areas, and obviously people are already starting that work, and I think we're just gonna see a real explosion there, and I'm excited to see what people learn.
SPEAKER_00:Same thing.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you so much to Dr. Margaret Hunter. It has always been a pleasure. And for me, again, just a continued full circle moment. I hope we have many, many more. So I appreciate Zephyr Ann. Thank you for having me on the show, really.