John Chuckman
COMMENT WRITTEN FOR AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN (BUT NOT POSTED AS COMMENTS WERE QUICKLY ENDED)
“Skin-lightening creams are dangerous – yet business is booming. Can the trade be stopped?”
It's not a pleasant fact, but it does appear from a great deal of observation, that people in general - both black and white - regard lighter skin as somehow better or more attractive. Not every single person, but many.
In a place like poor Haiti, all the people living up on the hill in relative wealth above the main city are light-skinned. Below, in all the slums and sprawl, are blacks.
In parts of Africa, the birth of an albino is regarded as positively the work of devils or magic. They are frequently hunted down and killed to be consumed as some kind of elixir meat.
Of course, in show business, it has always been the case. Michael Jackson and many, many others worked to lighten skin. Hair-straightening also was, and is, a common practice.
To my mind, it all says something about the human brain, perception, and emotional responses. I don't think it can be called, simplistically, just prejudice, as the pop articles we often see in The Guardian try telling us.
It is more fundamental. I doubt it is any more correctable than being homosexual is. Nothing with genetic roots is correctable by today’s science.
There are whole organizations and churches in the United States which are in the business of trying to do just that, "correct homosexuality." Millions believe that is possible. And there are “counselors” who make a living trying.
Just as when, long years ago, left-handed children in schools were seriously punished and determined efforts were made to "correct their deformity."
That's human beings. In need of another ten thousand years of evolution, at least.
