This thought experiment uses agent-based modeling (computational simulation) to demonstrate how colorism might operate within a local policing context. Colorism is the allocation of privilege and disadvantage based on skin color, with a prejudice for lighter skin. Colorism might help to explain some of the racial disparities in the US’ criminal justice system. I use simulated scenarios to explore the plausibility of this notion in the form of two questions: (1) How might colorism function within an organization, and (2) What might occur when managers apply the typical dilemmatic responses to detected colorism? The simulated world consists of three citizen-groups (lights, mediums, and darks), five policy responses to detected colorism, and two policing behaviors (fair and biased). Using NetLogo, one hundred simulations were conducted for each policy response and analyzed using one-way ANOVA and pairwise comparison of means. When the tenets of colorism were applied to a simulated organizational setting, only some of the tenets held true. For instance, those in the middle of the skin color spectrum experienced higher rates of incarceration when aggressive steps were taken to counter colorism, which ran counter to the expectations of the thought experiment. The study identified an opportunity to expand the description of colorism to help describe the plight of those in the middle of the skin color spectrum. The major contributions from this work include a conceptual model that describes the relationship between the distinct levels of colorism, and it progresses the notion of interactive colorism. The study also explored conditional statements that can be converted into hypotheses for future experiments.

中文翻译：

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在地方警务中操作色彩主义概念模型

该思想实验使用基于代理的建模（计算仿真）来演示色彩主义如何在本地警务环境中运行。色彩主义是基于肤色的特权和劣势的分配，对肤色较浅的人有偏见。色彩主义可能有助于解释美国刑事司法制度中的某些种族差异。我使用模拟场景以两个问题的形式来探讨这一概念的合理性：（1）组织中的色彩主义如何运作，以及（2）管理者对检测到的色彩主义应用典型的困境反应时会发生什么？模拟的世界由三个公民组成（灯光，媒介和黑暗），针对检测到的色彩歧视的五项政策回应以及两种监管行为（公平和偏见））。使用NetLogo，对每个策略响应进行了一百次仿真，并使用单向方差分析和均值成对比较进行了分析。当将色彩主义的原则应用于模拟的组织环境时，只有其中一些原则成立。例如，当采取激进的步骤来对抗色彩主义时，那些处于皮肤色谱光谱中间的人被监禁的比率更高，这与思想实验的预期背道而驰。研究发现，有机会扩展对色彩主义的描述，以帮助描述肤色中间人群的困境。这项工作的主要贡献包括描述了不同色彩主义水平之间关系的概念模型，并发展了互动色彩主义的概念。