The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines colorism as “prejudice or discrimination especially within a racial or ethnic group favoring people with lighter skin over those with darker skin” (“Colorism.” Merriam-Webster). In Midnight Without a Moon, Rose is relentlessly subjected to colorism, primarily perpetrated by her grandmother, Ma Pearl, and her cousin, Queen. The women in Rose’s family, though not all as light at Queen, are all of a medium skin tone with the exception of Rose’s Aunt Ruthie. Rose’s deep complexion is equated with ugliness, and she is frequently told that men will find her undesirable. Rose is very aware that her grandmother associates lightness with beauty and worthiness, and these values translate into every aspect of how she treats her grandchildren. Rose and her brother, Fred Lee, are forced to work in the fields picking cotton with their grandfather, while Queen is allowed to remain at home. Ma Pearl rationalizes that Queen’s light skin must not be subjected to the sun’s rays. Rose must assist with housework when she is not working in the fields, while Queen is allowed to nap or participate in leisure activities. Queen embraces these values and is smug about the privileges that Ma Pearl’s preferential treatment affords her. She dismisses the suffering and plight of those in her community, using color-oriented racial slurs against Rose in particular and criticizing Black people with judgmental terminology that suggests she believes they are her inferiors. Rose does not question the inequality of responsibilities in the home for fear of being physically harmed. Rose’s Aunt Belle is under the impression that Ma Pearl’s affection and reverence for her employer, Mrs. Robinson, are pathological in nature, resulting in a self-hatred and loss of dignity that Aunt Belle deeply resents and finds embarrassing. Queen’s father, though never named, is known to be white, and Rose wonders if this proximity to whiteness is behind her grandmother’s worshipful attitude toward Queen.

In Midnight Without a Moon, women are the only characters whose physical attractiveness is evaluated by the level of pigmentation in their complexions. Rose comments on Monty’s appearance, but only because she feels a kind of camaraderie with him in their shared characteristic. Emmett Till was murdered because he whistled at a white woman; the post-reconstruction and later Jim Crow south were characterized by an irrational narrative of fear constructed around the unsubstantiated presumption that white women were at risk of sexual violence by Black men. Instead, southern history is replete with copious evidence that the sexual abuse of Black women by white men was a pervasive injustice regularly resulting in children born of these interactions. Though there are no indications that Aunt Clara Jean and Queen’s relationships with white men were the result of coercion, the appearances of Queen and many of the other women in the Carter family suggest that exploitative relationships like these might be a part of their family history. Jackson does not address how this reality might shape Ma Pearl’s value system, but the discrepancies between men and women and the way they are expected to behave based upon gender and racial identity are prevalent throughout Midnight Without a Moon.