‘It’s not really that funny’: Young people’s experiences of colourist humour

Colourism is prejudice that penalises people the darker their skin is and the further their features are from those associated with whiteness. This article explores how adolescents in the UK use humour in ways that perpetuate colourism, particularly targeting those with dark skin. Drawing on reflexive thematic analysis of 130 interviews with minoritised ethnic students aged 13–18 years in London and Bristol, we argue that while colourist humour is often presented as harmless, it reproduces racist and colourist tropes that can dehumanise and harm those targeted and bystanders. Colourist humour was used to mark and test the boundaries of friendships and served to maintain racialised hierarchies, but it was also perpetuated by students with dark skin. While this may indicate that colourism is being internalised, our research suggests that this is not the whole story. Colourist humour is one way in which young people negotiate the harmful reality of everyday colourism.