Nonsense again. We have plenty of evidence of individuals prefering darker-skinned as well.
Now you’re being lazy.
You’re not refuting, you’re rebutting. This is an argument neither of us can win.
There’s no evidence that specifically points to an ‘inborn preference’ for humans. There’s plenty of evidence (chiefly, the existence of dark and very dark groups that have been around for long periods of time) that conflicts with this hypothesis. Various aspects of history and culture fully explain colorism without any need for an “inborn preference”. An “inborn preference” is not compatible with the existence of very dark groups who stay very dark for millennia.
That is evidence against my hypothesis. Evidence against yours is that African-Americans don’t generally practice self-loathing. Oppressed minority groups that have been successfully taught to hate themselves seek assimilation at all costs. Oppressed minority groups that have had their pride buttressed by an “us against the world” mentality do the opposite.
And as I said from the beginning, the concept of light being good and dark being evil is universal. There are exactly zero cultures that believe the opposite.
Doesn’t Lucifer have some postive light associations?
But you’ll also see descriptions of how Asians viewed Europeans when they first encountered them. The usual accounts were that the Europeans were ugly and had skin the color of fish or corpses. There certainly was no instinctive attraction to white skin.
The ancient Greeks and Romans also had no attraction for lighter-skinned people. While they were white themselves, they were darker complectioned Mediterraneans. They saw fairer skinned Celts and Germans and Scythians are barbarians. The bias against fair skinned people was enough that Roman law required prostitutes to wear blonde wigs so they would be distinguishable from respectable dark-haired women.
Self-loathing has nothing to do with my “hypothesis”. Self-loathing is not required for culture and history to influence populations towards things like colorism.
As to your “light-good” and “dark-bad” assertion: I’m not taking your word for it. You don’t know the beliefs of all cultures in all of history. Further, this doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with skin color.
Everybody (except albinos) tans. Light skin represents something other than an agricultural or construction lifestyle. For millennia, that was the mark of the educated and privileged.
This is not remotely a mystery.
As for the existence of dark skinned people, a minority of people prefer the dark skinned. Which might explain why there are a few hundred million black people and like 2 billion Asians.
This shouldn’t be that hard of a question – there are plenty of communities in which lighter skin is not necessarily preferred (especially in the last 100 years). Tanning is very popular in America and Europe. “Black is beautiful” has caught on in many scattered communities. Celebrities like Beyoncé and Naomi Campbell are considered as beautiful and alluring as anyone in the world. Barack and Michelle Obama are widely admired for their physical appearance and fashion sense.
Colorism can be entirely explained by history and culture, and it’s not even particularly mysterious: it has been a combination of things like slavery, colonialism, prestige for outdoor-vs-indoor work, and American/European media. It doesn’t require “self-loathing” (though there exist people who loathe themselves or “their kind”), and it doesn’t require any inborn preference for lighter skin.
It doesn’t require it, but the fact that it exists worldwide can’t just be blamed on what Europeans have done, since Europeans haven’t dominated every part of the world.
That’s utterly ridiculous, especially when you consider that about a billion of those Asians are frickin’ dark-skinned!
That’s true. Perhaps these Asians felt that white Caucasian was *too *white. The “ideal” whiteness that many Asians with their parasols, skin whitening cream, and long sleeves seem to be aiming for is some sort of light yellow, not actual white-people white. If they did end up with the exact same hue as a white Swede or Norwegian, they’d probably think they took it too far.
My cite about albinos in Tanzania being considered powerful magic by the local witches seems to have failed to impress. Even though according to wikipedia 98% of albinos die before the age of 40 by preventable reasons. The lighter skin means something to someone.
But while checking wikipedia for examples of albinos in other cultures I read on the page about albinos in popular culture:
the following:
So I am unsure whether that means “In Japan ideals call for as pale skin as possible” or “In Japanese fiction ideals call for as pale skin as possible” but it does serve as a data point that, in some non-white cultures, pale skin is seen as better.
TCMF-2L
I left that billion out. I was only counting Chinese, Japanese, Siberians, Thais, Koreans, etc.
No one has “just” blamed it on Europeans. There have been many factors, and I just mentioned them.
You left the billion out that totally invalidates your statement…
I think the important thing is percentages, not raw numbers.
“There are more people who prefer lighter skin than darker skin” is not the premise of the thread or what I’ve been arguing against. The OP was about the possibility of a genetic disposition to distrust dark-skinned people and adaher followed up with a claim that a preference for lighter skin “seems to be a universal human trait that we’ve evolved”.
But feel free to keep playing silly games. I’m out.
I think it isn’t as much pigment per se as it is neotenous traits which people find cuter and maybe more trustworthy?en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny
Black people don’t seem to retain as much Neoteny as do Asians and Whites so maybe that would be a better explanation than skin pigment alone, it’s a combination of traits that are biological and also social constructs. For the record I am most attracted to women that have Mediterranean features, olive skin Italians and Hispanics and lightly tanned Asians. Black skin is just too dark for me and I also feel it does have a kind of psychological effect, that causes a kind of negative filter in the brain both consciously and subconsciously. Part of it is probably viewing them as the other, unlike me and therefore bad. For some reason when I was in the Army I often thought that the darker skinned black women looked angrier or cruel somehow and very often in reality they were some of the nicest women I met when I actually spoke with them.