Colourism and Social Hierarchy in Black Female Identity Construction in Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half
Keywords:
Black Female Identity, Colourism, Identity Construction, Intergenerational Trauma, Racial Hierarchy, Racial Passing, Social StratificationAbstract
This study investigates the issue of colourism and social hierarchy in the Black female construction of identity in Brit Bennett’s novel The Vanishing Half. It examines the ways in which discrimination based on skin colour works as a system that affects identity development, opportunities for social movement and psychological experience. A qualitative interpretive approach is used, and the research will be guided by Black feminist theory, critical race theory and identity formation theory. Stella, Desiree, Jude and Kennedy are some of the characters examined in depth within the novel to explore how the issues of racial passing, exclusion and generational trauma influence identity outcomes. Results show a hierarchy of colourism within the Black community – a system that favours those who are closer to white, while those who are darker are pushed further. The study also demonstrates that
identity is dynamic, relational and is negotiated, shaped and limited by structures and agency. Racial passing is a significant method of identity fragmentation, creating privilege and psychological instability. The research underscores that Black female identity is constructed in the interplay of multiple sets of racial, gendered, and social categories, as opposed to predetermined categories. To sum up, the research is valuable to literary and race scholarship in showing how Bennett’s novel unearths the negative structural impacts of colourism from generation to generation. It also highlights the need for the study of identity as a socially constructed and historically shaped process in the field of contemporary fiction and cultural representation studies.
How to cite this article:
Rasool I. Colourism and Social Hierarchy in Black
Female Identity Construction in Brit Bennett’s
The Vanishing Half. J Adv Res Humani Social Sci
2026; 13(1): 36-44
DOI:10.24321/2349.2872.202613
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