How Healthy Is She? Perceptions of the Physical Healthiness of Black Women by Skin Tone and Perceiver Race

Perceptions of the healthiness of Black women shape the way that they are treated and may differ by characteristics of the person and the perceiver. We examined perceptions of Black women's physical healthiness by skin tone and rater race. In a within-subjects design, adults (N = 280; 45.7% Black, 54.3% White) rated the physical healthiness of the person in photos of Black women. We found a significant interaction between target skin tone and rater race, F(1.88, 519.05) = 3.27, p = .038. In line with a skin tone bias, both White and Black raters evaluated lighter skin toned targets as most physically healthy. However, White raters evaluated dark skin toned targets as significantly more healthy than medium skin toned targets, whereas Black raters viewed these two groups similarly. Inaccurate perceptions of Black women by skin tone may have implications for the stigmatization and mistreatment of Black women in both medical and nonmedical settings.