Just wondering… There was a comment on “Good Times” about working on a tan. It seemed like a serious remark as there was no (live) audience response. So, do Blacks suntan? burn? And/or, do they prefer to…as I wager they would prefer not to.
Just a straight-forward question…
Yes, they do tan. As to burning, I’ve never known any to complain about it, but I can’t see why it isn’t possible in theory.
I presume they don’t prefer to burn, but as to a tan, well, you’d have to ask a black person.
A former boss of mine, who was black, went on vacation to Cozumel for a week and came back as red as its possible for someone with fairly dark skin to be, I think. It was a decidedly odd look. My boss seemed kind of baffled by it; he said he’d never had a sunburn before and it hadn’t even occurred to him to use sunblock. (Lucky him; I’ve gotten terrible burns in that part of the world even with sunblock.)
So, yes, even people with a lot of melanin can burn, but they do have more natural protection, so it’s harder than it is for paler folk.
I’m pretty pale-faced for a black person, so it always shocks me when people act surprised whenever I talk about getting tanned/sunburned. There is no magical threshold of melanin content that separates “tanners” from “non-tanners”. Everyone has the potential to get burned; it’s just harder for some people.
About whether they want to or not, it depends on the individual just like anything else. The most sun-bathingiest people I know are black people. Although there probably are some black people who are afraid of the sun, I don’t personally know anyone like this. It seems to me that light-skinned black people generally like suntans (for “damn near white” folks like my dad, a tan takes a little of the “high” out of his “yellow”). I imagine, though, that appreciation for suntans is lower among dark-skinned individuals. Probably for political reasons–at least in the US–but also because it’s just harder for a darker-skinned person to look sickly pale.
I look better with a tan (as do most people IMHO). I look down right scary when I’m pale. So while I don’t sunbathe, I don’t exactly hide my skin from the sun’s rays either. It would be hard to do that anyway because of my line of work and where I live. I went from the second-palest person in my immediate family to the darkest one after just a few months down here.
(I once had a guy ask why I would want to get tanned, and I almost took offense at the question. I wanted to ask him if he felt I was too dark or something.)
One of the girls in Americorps with me was Fijian of Indian descent, with dark brown skin. She came back from an outdoorsy project with her arms about three shades darker than her legs, which had been covered the whole time.
Depending on the skin tone, blacks can tan and even ebony-skinned Africans with no European admixture to speak of can get burned, though it might take direct sunlight in an equatorial zone to do it.
My ex-girlfriend, who is Haitian, got burned a few times, with peeling and everything, though she didn’t realize it until much later. Apparently it never got worse than an itchy tingling feeling for her and she didn’t realize that she’d spent too much time in the sun until she started peeling several days later. Her normal skin tone was medium-dark, but she would get noticeably darker from spending a few hours in the sun.
I’m not sure what to make of your assumption that black persons would prefer not to (tan that it, no one wants to burn.)
As it happens, you would have been right in the past. My grandmother disapproved of tanning, because she, like many other African-Americans of her generation thought that being as light-skinned as possible was the best thing possible.
As a slight aside, I’ve noticed that many white persons cannot tell when a black person of their acquaitance has a tan. I once spent a weekend at the beach, and came to work on Monday several shades darker than my usual self. (I’m fairly light-skinned, but I tan quickly and deeply. I also burn without sun protection.) A black woman who worked in my building, but not at my company, immediately asked me if I had been on vacation. But when I brought up my tan in idle conversation with my white colleagues, the totally perplexed response was: “You’ve got a tan? What tan?” These people, who I worked with daily for months, couldn’t tell, while a woman I saw once in a blue moon in the elevator, noticed immediately.
Please don’t misunderstand my words. I have many, many Black friends. All of them hated the hot weather. It seemed to me they would not prefer to suntan. So, my assumption was only based on a small cross-section of knowledge of friends in the USA.
I remember learning about South Africa in History class, and how the Whites would prefer not to be tan - for ignorant reasons, of course. How foolish and small we must seem to our Maker. - Jinx
I once wondered the same thing as the OP. Then I underwent Army basic training, in South Carolina, in August!
*
Everyone* tanned and/or burned, from the pale redhead to the ones who are black. In the showers it was really noticable. Your skin colored from the middle of the forehead down to a V below the throatline, and on the arms from just below the should on down. These were the places where the skin wasn’t shaded or covered. We white girls tended to burn, then tan, while the black girls just got darker.
Just take a look at the football lockerroom interviews. You’ll see that the black players have a tan line at about the collarbone, where the jersey and pads have blocked the sun in months of practices and games.
The point’s been made, but I’ll rephrase it - some people like to tan and some people don’t. Some of those people are black people and some are white people. I know some black folk who don’t want to get any darker and they stay out of the sun. And I know lots of black folk who don’t care one way or the other. And I know lots of black folks who like to hang at the beach and they get black as the ace of spades and they don’t care. And I know white folks who take pretty much the same attitude. What I don’t know are black folks who set out to get dark intentionally with the same fervor and vigor as some white folks. I never saw a black guy go to a tanning booth, or sit out by a pool with one of those little silver foil reflectors, for example. And I do definitely know some black folks who are definitely loathe to get any darker than they are and who avoid the sun. But they are pretty much few and far between in my experience.
I definitely tan.
I started to burn when I was in New Zealand (“ozone layer, what ozone layer?”) I wasn’t even in the sun that long, and it wasn’t that sunny. Still, my face started to peel. I bought sunblock. SPF 30. I used it a lot that trip.
I live in Seattle and work in an office, so I don’t really worry about sunblock that much except in summer when I’m doing long distance runs and bike rides. I love laying out in the sun, I just don’t have time. And I look a lot better with a tan.
My question is, why does this get asked so often?
Do tan lines fade slower on darker skin? In spring in high school a medium dark skinned black girl in gym with me was pissed because she had tan lines from sandals from the previous summer. The tan lines did look pretty silly.
One of my parent’s friends, who is a Masai from Kenya, went back to visit her family after almost 10 years living in Ireland. She didn’t think to use suncream the first few days and was pretty badly sunburned.
I recall years ago members of the West Indian cricket team complaining that while they don’t get sunburnt at home, they do in Australia if they are not careful. We are of course the skin cancer capital of the world.
Do you know many light-skinned black people? Me, being on the lighter end of the black folk spectrum, would bathe in the sun all day if 1) I had the time and 2) there was no such thing as sun damage. My dad is a fervent tanner and so is my aunt. Banana Boat would go out of business if not for the two of them.
I have had the same experience that KayElCee has had. Black people are much more likely to notice when I have a tan than white people are, for some reason. Perhaps the OP hasn’t noticed all these black people walking around with tans because he can’t tell the difference between a regular black person and tanned black person.