Black parents teach their kids to prefer lighter skin? And just because something isn’t present in babies doesn’t mean it’s not genetic. Babies don’t have sexual preferences either.
This whole idea that it’s based on the legacy of slavery creates a big contradiction. If dark skinned people had a self-loathing problem that caused them to prefer the lighter-skinned, then they wouldn’t want to maintain a distinct culture. They’d be even more keen on adopting the larger culture and fitting in than anyone else. Yet the most oppressed peoples tend to insist on maintaining a unique identity. I maintain this isn’t out of self-loathing, but pride.
For people who deny that there is a natural preference for lighter skin across cultures…why then would dark skinned cultures not naturally prefer dark skin? There is no incentive to prefer lighter skin, yet they often do, and I think even millennia ago in Asia, lighter skin was preferred, so this isn’t a modern Western invention.
But at the same time, while a preference for lighter skin may be “natural,” that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be fought.
Can you provide evidence that this is true in non-western societies? In other words, in societies in which “white” skin color is not associated with the majority or with a ruling minority? So far only dubious example had been given.
Again, the only example I can give is anecdotal, so it’s not very scientific. But growing up in Asia, there were women would carry parasols to avoid getting tanned. They’d wear long detachable sleeves made for the purpose of covering their forearms from sunshine. Even some men underwent cosmetic skin-lightening, I think. I’ve heard of Asian people trying to keep soy sauce out of some of their childrens’ diets because it was thought soy sauce made the skin darker. There is simply this beauty ideal that lighter skin = better.
I hear this is similarly the case with Haiti, too, but I’ve never been to Haiti.
Maybe, or maybe not, but society and culture probably do.
It’s not just based on slavery. It’s based on many things, including the aftermath of slavery – lighter skin in many places was considered more beautiful and more desirable. And your analysis of what former slaves and their descendants would be “keen on adopting” sounds like guessing… and it doesn’t contradict in any way the possible desire to maintain a “unique identity”. Further, separate cultures aren’t maintained because people “insist” on maintaining their culture – they’re maintained because that’s what they know. When people stop knowing it, and stop teaching it to their children, then separate cultures merge.
I think it is more probable that humans are disposed to distrust people whose appearance and biomarkers define them as different from the ingroup/tribe. And that light skin is preferred at the moment because we are in the cultural sunset of the Age of Europe. White skin have been associated with social status for a while.
This is anecdotal, but we have a fairly large Vietnamese/Cambodian population where I live, and a good number of Latinos as well. I went to school, and later worked with, quite a few, and there is definitely a bias toward lighter skin and finer features. I don’t know whether this was true of their cultures even before Europeans appeared in their countries, but colorism is certainly in play now.
Sexual selection is a big force in evolution. But we don’t have to hypothesize about “inborn” preferences for humans – if sexual selection for light skin were a significant inborn preference species-wide, then there wouldn’t be dark skinned populations. Further, among ancient populations that get tons of sunlight, any sexual-selective preference for light skin would be quickly “bred” out, as people who happened to have sexual-selective preferences (by random chance/mutation) for darker skin would have more surviving children. This is assuming there is any “inborn” preference at all, for any group, for particular skin tones.
So basically the fact that there are tons of dark and very-dark skinned groups on earth is proof that there is no species-wide preference for light skin.
That’s too simplistic. There are multiple reasons why people light and dark might still find themselves marrying dark-skinned people and having dark-skinned offspring - availability, circumstances, etc.
This isn’t a “100% of people prefer light skin over dark skin” extreme. The world is more complex.
Of course there are multiple reasons – I’m just refuting the assertion that there is some inborn, natural preference among all or most humans for light skin. There’s not, and the existence of lots of dark and very-dark skinned populations is proof of this.
But in a nation like Taiwan where 98% or more of people are not white, why would the “Age of Europe” outweigh the “ingroup/tribe” in priority?
You’re essentially saying, “White skin is the ingroup/tribe thing because this is the Age of Europe,” but why wouldn’t “ingroup/tribe” mean “Asian” in a country that was 98% Asian? Europe and America are thousands of miles away from Taiwan.
I thought this had to do with skin tone and social/economic status. If you are poor and have to actually work for a living, in some communities that means being outside a lot so you get darker. If you’re rich, you can live a life of leisure so don’t get tanner. If you can keep from getting sun, it makes you at least look more like the elite class.
In other areas, for example Hollywood, the elite can demonstrate they have leisure time by getting tan and fit, or paying money to look tan and fit.
There is really a lot of psychological research in the area of skin color and tone. It is perfectly believable that, in certain societies, white people being tan is seen as a positive while black people being too black is still seen as negative in the same society. The variation in preferences throughout the world, in particular for preferences of lighter-skinned people in regard to being tan or not, makes me think it’s almost certainly cultural and societal rather than innate.
It does mean “Asian”. However, while I can’t say specifically for Taiwan, I would not be surprised to hear that there is an esthetic preference for lighter skinned Taiwanese.
For one thing, there are likely many other cultural and societal reasons that can lead to preferences for light skin (like the documented class differences in some societies – upper classes avoided the sun, and were very light, and lighter skin was therefore associated with wealth, privilege, and good breeding). For another, European and American media and culture are virtually everywhere, to some degree. Everyone watches Hollywood movies.
Preference only comes into play when there are options available to choose from. Someone may prefer light skin over dark skin, but finds that 99% of his or her realistic marrying prospects are dark-skinned.
Also, whenever a dark-skinned person marries a light-skinned person, a light-skinned person marries a dark-skinned person. This means, (in theory,) that the light-skinned person has to be attracted to the dark-skinned person, too. Now if light skin is typically seen as better, why would the light skinned person assent to such a marriage? In other words, dark-skinned people can’t necessarily “marry light” even if they wanted to.
I think of light-skin preference as being analogous to how tall men are typically considered more attractive, throughout much of the world, than short men.
Is it fair? I would say no, it’s not. But it is more or less a fact of life. And when it comes to relationship attraction or preference, scolding someone as “unfair” often will not change their preferences. This isn’t like hiring or not hiring a job applicant, in which racial discrimination can (in theory) be banned. When it comes to aesthetic appeal, people simply think the way they think.
If dark brown-skinned people always have a preference for lighter skinned-people, why did the displacing Bantu not worship the much lighter KhoiSan peoples as gods?
Also, when it comes to dating, race is only one factor out of many. I recall some survey data that showed that on some dating websites, white men and Asian women were the most popular, while Asian men and black women were the least popular.