High yellow (dialect: yaller, yella) was a term used to describe a light-skinned black person in the United States.
Etymology "High" is usually considered a reference to a social class system in which skin color (and associated ancestries) is a major factor, placing those of lighter skin (with more white ancestry) at the top and those of darker skin at the bottom. High yellows, while still considered part of the African-American ethnic group, were thought to gain privileges because of their skin and ancestry. "Yellow" is in reference to the usually very pale undertone to the skin color of members of this group, due to mixture with white people. Another reading of the etymology of the word "high" is that it is a slang word for "very", often used in Southern English, therefore "very yellow" (as opposed to brown).
Use as social class distinction In an aspect of colorism, "high yellow" was also related to social class distinctions among people of color. In post-Civil War South Carolina, and according to one account by historian Edward Ball, "Members of the colored elite were called 'high yellow' for their shade of skin", as well as slang terms meaning snobbish. In his biography of Duke Ellington, a native of Washington, D.C., David Bradbury wrote that Washington's social life was dominated by light-skinned 'high yellow' families, some pale enough to 'pass for white,' who shunned and despised darker African-Americans. The behaviour of high yellow society was a replica of high white, except that whereas the white woman invested in tightly curled permanents and, at least if young, cultivated a deep sun tan, the colored woman used bleach lotions and Mrs. Walker's "Anti-Kink" or the equivalent to straighten hair. In some cases the confusion of color with class came about because some of the lighter-skinned black people came from families of mixed heritage free before the Civil War, who had begun to accumulate education and property. In addition, some wealthier white planters made an effort to have their "natural sons" (the term for children outside of marriage who were produced with enslaved women) educated or trained as apprentices; some passed on property to them. For instance, in 1860, most of the 200 subscription students at Wilberforce University were the mixed-race sons of white planters, who paid for their education. These social distinctions made the cosmopolitan Harlem more appealing to many black people. The Cotton Club of the Prohibition era "had a segregated, white-only audience policy and a color-conscious, 'high yellow' hiring policy for chorus girls". It was common for lighter-skinned African Americans to hold "paper bag parties," which admitted only those whose complexion was lighter than that of a brown paper bag . In her 1942 Glossary of Harlem Slang, Zora Neale Hurston placed "high yaller" at the beginning of the entry for colorscale, which ran:
high yaller, yaller, high brown, vaseline brown, seal brown, low brown, dark brown
Applied to individuals The French author Alexandre Dumas père was the son of a French mulatto general (born in Saint-Domingue but educated by his father in France) and his French wife. He was described as having skin "with a yellow so high it was almost white". In a 1929 review, Time referred to him as a "High Yellow Fictioneer". Singer Eartha Kitt was taunted by darker-skinned relatives and called that "yella gal" during her childhood.
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