The Melanated Downgrade

A new term to describe semantic racism

Photo by Nkululeko Mayiyane on Unsplash

Many years ago, I watched a video with Joy DeGruy Leary on the what she coined “post traumatic slave syndrome” (PTSS) and I was really intrigued by this concept, I had never heard of it. The basic premise is just as a soldier of war suffers from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) because of the brutalities of armed conflict, so too do people of African descent who have a lineage they can trace to the transatlantic slave trade. They suffer from multigenerational trauma that has never been acknowledged or healed (the specific trauma of slavery) and as a result in the present, the continued effects of this multigenerational trauma plays out as self-esteem issues, anger, rage, even internalized self-hatred.

If you’ve been following the P Diddy trial I just keep thinking - what he did to Cassy, someone at some point had to do to him, and so on and so forth. Abusive people are almost always victims of abusive people - doesn’t excuse them, doesn’t make them right, but it does help to explain why it just seems like a lot of Black people who should be living their best life having achieved at such a high level become some of the worst people, harming others just as the so-called “man” would have harmed us centuries ago.

But that’s not what my post is actually about today. I’m thinking of PTSS as a theory/concept/term that entered the zeitgeist 20 years ago at a pivot point in terms of the Black collective understanding of how centuries of mistreatment - without healing - continued to manifest in our actions, words, and thoughts. I think there’s another concept that I’m just beginning to develop that captures a particular moment in our institutions that I’m witnessing that isn’t exactly “racism” as it has been defined, it’s not “implicit or explicit bias” as defined, and it’s not really a microaggression either. I’m calling this manifestation the Melanated Downgrade.

What is the Melanated Downgrade?

"Melanated" refers to having skin that contains a high concentration of melanin, leading to a darker skin tone. It is also used to refer to Black people, in particular. Even though South Asians can have darker pigment than Black people, often, they are not framed as melanated.

When I was browsing through the copyright free images for this post, for example, using the keyword “melanin” all the options were images of Black people, mostly women - so even the algorithm has been trained to equate melanin only with Black people.

“Downgrade” is defined as when you reduce to a lower grade, rank, or level of importance. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary also defines downgrade as a “descent toward an inferior state.”

Photo by Ussama Azam on Unsplash

When you put these two concepts together, it speaks for itself but in real-time, you might not recognize it.

Over the past 20 years, the work of EDI (DEI) has worked to shift the very real experiences of anti-Black racism. My parents would often tell us stories of repeatedly being called n***er at their place of work in the 1970s and into the 1980s. This was very common and in some spaces, expected. Today, it is nearly unheard of and when it does happen, actions are taken to respond (we can debate if the actions match the offense), but there is still an acknowledgement of harm and inappropriate use of language.

A Melanated Downgrade works in a nuanced way that can often be hard to pinpoint or attach to any one person. Instead, it’s similar to how Martin Barker, in his book The New Racism: Conservatives and the Ideology of the Tribe (1981) describes the “new racism” as a form of racism that is highly sophisticated and disguised through semantic manipulations. As it relates to the Black experience, most people cite Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (2004), in which she defines the “new racism” as:

“A new strain … that is pervasive but harder to recognize than the old kind. It a kind of racism that is subtle and can be located within popular culture through the use of coded language and race-neutral rhetoric to mask its presence.”

Examples of this semantic new racism include the cooptation and misuse of “woke” and “CRT” and before it, “thug,” “ghetto,” “super predator” etc.

The Melanated Downgrade happens in our institutions of higher learning. It happens to those Black folks who are high achieving on every metric, especially when they were not hired as part of a cluster hire or an identity hire, but somehow in the 21st century university managed to get a job in a fair and equitable job search. They simply were the best candidate for the job.

However, as the best candidate for the job begins to outperform others, a Melanated Downgrade is then applied to their achievements. So for example, you win $1.2 million in external, tri-council funding, and the only response from benefactors of that funding is “fantastic news.” There are no announcements, follow ups, or even private messages of praise to let you know that you’re doing a great job.

On a sematic level, the response of “fantastic news” actually has nothing to do with you, it implies an institutional benefit. So in that instance, the Melanated Downgrade works through a semantic omission to acknowledge that:

Your talents

Your creativity

Your ingenuity are the reasons for your success.

The Melanated Downgrade disembodies you from your success and instead, the success is about the benefactors of your brilliance, not a reflection of your brilliance. It’s as if you have nothing to do with their perception of your success.

Here’s an Example:

About a year ago, I signed a letter related an award I had won. The letter was three pages outlining my duties and responsibilities, and every leader at the university related to the matter was copied on the letter. What struck me was what appeared at the end of it (I am paraphrasing):

This achievement is an asset to the university, and faculty. We looking forward to working with you.

In that moment, I had received a Melanated Downgrade. The “we” was a very intentional pronoun meant to denote that while the win was significant, it was not a win for me - my efforts were downgraded - but instead, a win for the institution.

We must begin to understand the nuances of language use. Semantics matter. No one hates you in today’s institution. No one is going to call you a racial epithet, but what they will do is invalidate your wins, minimize your achievements, and downgrade your milestones based solely on your melanin, because they don’t know you - they’ve never made any attempt to.

Stay woke out there. And if you have further examples of this new form of racism I’ve outlined here, please share. You are not alone.