For the record, let’s be clear that Racism flows both ways - it’s not just whites looking down upon blacks, browns(I am one myself) but there are blacks, browns who think that white skin is better, as browns, blacks we have all seen it
ok, now that I have gotten it out of the way, I find it strange that in some other areas of life somehow the darker tone is not seen as a bad thing
Take Dogs for example - when people want a puppy for their family, they might look at a litter full of puppies of all colors - white, black, golden brown etc but strangely no one here worries about the color of these puppies. Black haired puppies or Dogs are as likely to be adopted as white or golden puppies or dogs. Why is that?
Another area is how we dress - men, mostly - at a wedding we see men wearing the same color suit - black mostly, whereas we find women wearing all kind of colorful dresses. But even here, women are not afraid to dress in black, they do not dislike it based on the color. Maybe not to a wedding, but a party or going out, sure, a black dress is ok
Another area is our choice of color for our cars, SUV’s - here again the predominant color is black, not white, nor gold!
I am sure there are other areas of life where we behave this way
Why the difference?
I shouldn’t have to explain this. It’s not simply a hatred of the color. So liking a black dog is unrelated to discrimination of a person of African descent.
ok now that I know you are a moderator, this won’t work for me. I know you will insist that you are right and I am wrong and any responses from me will be “you are arguing” - so, thanks for participating, but I will confine my responses to users like myself
Geographical environments create special sensory and pysical qualities. So it follows that everything that is alive today is an expression of adaption to the environment.
The natural challenges differ for every environment and that is how the brains processing functions become attuned to the environment. When that goes wrong, the little one dies.
But each specialized adaption is “equal” in the strictest sense of learning and acquiring long-term survival skills as a species, or all extant species on earth for that matter.
The human potential knows no color except as it relates to the environment. It seems that should be clear by now.
Black people are far less likely to develop melanoma than non-Hispanic White people (at a rate of 1 per 100,000 compared to 30 per 100,000) due to the protection that melanin, the body’s natural skin pigment, provides from damaging ultraviolet rays.
As a mother of biracial sons, I probably know this better than anyone. My sons were as kids and in some respects, still are not Black enough or not white enough, depending on who’s talking. Yet, dogs and cats don’t care about such stupid things as colour. They are more territorial, some humans are scared of a black cat and black cats get the worse treatment by some, especially around Halloween. As far as clothing goes, black is slimming.
Racism is incidentally a color of skin but not limited to it or can be very independent of it.
Racism is classifying humans and ranking them, before discriminating. Everything can be used, color of skin, religion, sex, profession, social rank and so.
Incidentally, for me, people called blacks are much more brown than black. I can be mistaken.
I know that Dogs are color-blind, not sure if Cats are also. I wonder what if we were color-blind - would the world be a far better place?
We don’t care either - that is the curious part to me. Why do we divide ourselves based on skin color - even in today’s movies it is still taboo for a black man to kiss a white woman, though a black woman kissing a white guy is ok - so finally one barrier down
But that still does not explain why we think so differently when it comes to skin color - why there is so much hatred based on it
Actually, the do have some cones, just not as many as humans, so they aren’t totally colour blind.
Is it really? I didn’t know this.
I don’t know. I don’t understand it either, because when I look at my sons, I don’t see them as being 1/2 Black. I see them as my sons, but the in the U.S. at least, because they have one drop Black blood, whatever that means, they are often considered Black. It’s BS, but that’s how it is. I still hug my sons, who are grown men now and give them a peck on the cheek, even in public.
That’s not true. I’m a mod too and if you can give evidence, then for your statements, then we can discuss it, but that doesn’t mean mods are right and everyone else is wrong.
Racism is based on the whole phenotype rather than just skin color. However, colorism is also a real thing and that might be more aligned with what you’re describing.
I’m glad you qualified that statement.
In tropical countries, dark skin is an advantage . Dark skinned people are much less susceptible to skin cancer than pink-skinned people.
That second paragraph kind of went right past me. I have to look into that one. I know for America, they tried to enslave the Indians, who seemed docile to them at first but they knew how to survive in what Europeans saw as wilderness, so they could escape. Enslaving other Europeans had obvious disadvantages. But, there have been times when trade with Africa was normal. OTOH enslaving them goes back to Biblical times, the New Testament documents that, although color is not mentioned.
There’s a difference between slavery and racism, but in US history, the one led to the other. In my timeline above, indentured servitude was the norm in the 15th century and it was also normal to think of non-Europeans as primitive and unable to do anything other than physical labor. In 1676, when those servants rebelled against the system and demanded rights, the owners knew they couldn’t stop that revolution. Some of the owners wrote laws that gave those rights to white people and defined the non-whites as forever slaves, ending one oppressive system and creating a new one that became the industrialized system of human torture that we know about. Religion was used to justify it, and an entire culture developed so children would grow up believing it was okay to beat and kill other children. It’s hard to undo something like that.
Indentured servitude in the U.S. was not much better than slavery was in the U.S. Both existed during slavery in the U.S. Strangely enough, the North had indentured servitude, while the South had slavery, thus the North, until indentured servitude ended, was not much better than the South. You are also right that entire generations grew up believing it was OK to beat and kill those who looked different though.
A little off topic, but true enough. Dark features in men are universally considered attractive, while light features are universally considered attractive in women. But that is only one part of the reason why lighter features are held in higher regard in the tropics.
