Which do people find most attractive, having tan skin or fair skin?

Does anyone else find this racist trend disturbing? I didn't even know people were trying to whiten their skin.

• THIS WEEK on CHANGE.ORG Racist Facebook App Plus: Another BP Spill? • Rethinking Haiti Relief • 50% of Children Missing • Prisons vs. Schools • Poverty-Creating Jobs Dear Dabendan , This past week, Vaseline launched a controversial Facebook application that encouraged users to lighten the appearance of their skin. The application was targeted at users in India, who were asked to upload their profile photos and whiten their faces. This isn't the first time Unilever -- which owns Vaseline -- has used less-than-discreet attempts to market the virtues of white skin in India. Back in 2008, the multinational began hawking a skin-whitening product called "White Beauty." The difference now is that by using Facebook, Unilever has the potential to reach its more than 500 million users around the world, and spread its racially charged message that white is beautiful. The skin whitening industry has taken off across India and other Asian countries, and creams are sold on shelves in black neighborhoods in the U.S. as well. The last thing we need is a tool on Facebook to extend this disturbing trend online. While Unilever's application is offensive, it gives Facebook the opportunity to draw a line in the sand of what sort of applications it is willing to host, and what kind of values it hopes to advance. As the largest social network in the world, the company has an unprecedented opportunity to advance tolerance and understanding. Let's make sure it serves that purpose rather than serving as a platform for prejudice. Join us in calling on Facebook to remove Unilever's racially charged application today.

• Answer:

  1) The accurate term for this is "colorism". It is not necessarily related to racism. And yes, it is annoying. As annoying as telling women that thin is beautiful. 2) "It's difficult to pinpoint a specific cultural reason. In India it is partly racist: lower-caste Hindus are usually darker and upper-caste Hindus usually lighter. Women are constantly told across Asia that if they get darker no man will want to marry them. Being lighter-skinned is also partly seen as a sign of affluence; it means you didn't have to work outside in the fields for your living. " "It's worth pointing out that south-India has its own television and film industry that celebrates darker actors, but it isn't reflective of the more high-profile, Mumbai-based Bollywood industry" "It's not completely comparable to white people getting a tan. In India (for example), skin colour is associated with caste - the darker the skin, the lower the caste. So it's not primarily about fashion and vanity; it's about social discrimination." Source and further information: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/01/skin-whitening-death-thailand 3) "Colorism is discrimination in which human beings are accorded differing social treatment based on skin color. The preference often gets translated into economic status because of opportunities for work. Colorism can be found across the world. The term is generally used for the phenomenon of people discriminating within their own ethnic groups. The term colorism refers to when lighter skin tones are preferred and darker skin is considered less desirable or darker skin tones are preferred and lighter skin is considered less desirable." "Even prior to any interactions between Europeans and South Asians, colorism has been an issue for South Asian cultures. According to Communist revisionist historians, color prejudice was introduced due to Aryans from Central Asia invading India in ancient times and subjugating the "dark" indigenous Indians. This form of negationist historical revisionism was part of the British colonial ideology. Much of these theories were simply conjecture fueled by European imperialism. This styling of an Aryan invasion by British colonial fantasies of racial supremacy was incorporated by Communist revisionists as part of waging a Trotskyist permanent revolution in India between perceived "whites" and "darks", and has no basis in genetic or anthropological studies of South Asian populations. More recent studies have also debunked the British claims that so-called "Aryans" and "Dravidians" have a "racial divide". A study conducted by the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in 2009 (in collaboration with Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT) analyzed half a million genetic markers across the genomes of 132 individuals from 25 ethnic groups from 13 states in India across multiple caste groups. The study establishes, based on the impossibility of identifying any genetic indicators across caste lines, that castes in South Asia grew out of traditional tribal organizations during the formation of Indian society, and was not the product of any mythical "Aryan Invasion" and "subjugation" of Dravidian people, unlike what British racial-revanchist and revisionist claims would have one believe. The study does go on state that there were two different populations that originally settled India. They were the Ancestral North Indian (ANI) in the north and the Ancestral South Indian (ASI) in the south. Over time these groups mixed together. Traditionally, Hinduism has never shown a preference for skin colour and dark skinned people can be found in all castes of Hindu society. In the Mahabharata, the character known as Krishnaa was of dark complexion but was an epitome of beauty. The incarnation of Vishnu, Krishna himself (widely revered by Vaishnavites), was said to be "as black as a full raincloud". Individuals in South Asia have tended to see whiter skin as more beautiful. This was most clearly visible in British India, where skin color served as a signal of high status for British. Thus, those individuals with fairer skin color enjoyed more privileges and opportunities than those with dark skin. Anglo-Indians with more European features were often more upwardly mobile and were considered to have a more affluent status. These individuals gained preferences in education and in employment. Darker skinned individuals were socially and economically disadvantaged due to their appearance. (Beyond the South Asian subcontinent, persons who were dark-skinned, "black" or "colored" faced a disadvantage in most European-held colonies.)" Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorism