Word.ws English Dictionary

shadism

shadism noun: prejudice on the basis of skin pigmentation.

Noun

shadism (uncountable)

  1. Prejudice on the basis of skin pigmentation.
    • Shadism (Staples 2008), a legacy of slavery, is a form of skin tone bias that identifies groups and individuals on the basis of their degree of pigmentation. It is an evaluation of people that minutely registers traits such as skin color, hair, and […]2012, Ronald E. Hall, The Melanin Millennium: Skin Color as 21st Century International Discourse, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 158
    • A safe place, to the girls, meant a place where they were able to develop a discussion on unspoken issues such as shadism, body shape, relationships, and being a Black girl without feeling the need to justify themselves.2017, Jennifer L. Martin, Ashley E. Nickels, Martina Sharp-Grier, Feminist Pedagogy, Practice, and Activism: Improving Lives for Girls and Women, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN, page 237

Origin of shadism

From shade + -ism.

Questions about shadism

What does shadism mean?
Shadism means prejudice on the basis of skin pigmentation.
What part of speech is shadism?
Shadism is a noun.

Words near shadism in the dictionary

  1. shading pens
  2. shading up
  3. shadings
  4. shadirvan
  5. shadirvans
  6. shadism
  7. Shadix
  8. Shadixes
  9. shadjam
  10. shadkan
  11. shadkanim

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shadism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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