The dark skin bias — A deeper understanding
It is interesting to note the burden of skin color when it comes to perception. The most severe form of in-group bias is linked to skin color. Many dark-skinned people had to suffer a lot for no fault of theirs. It is difficult to think of any other quality, where the possessor is punished for something he has rather than something he doesn’t. This seems very counter-intuitive.
Racism and the legacy of colonialism:
The reasons proposed have been varied. Firstly, and most importantly, skin color is closely tied to racism and colonialism. Entire tribes and cultures have been vanquished in the name of racial superiority. For a small group of islanders in England to capture the world, they had to resort to tact and guile. One of them was to stress the purity of the white race. Any “contamination” with dark skin decreased the purity of the individual. One of the examples are the mestizos in South America. South America was once a proud nation with prosperous civilization with the Aztec, Incan, and Mayan civilizations. After the infamous Spanish and European conquests and pillage of the continent, the native population began measuring the amount of European blood by parentage. For example, the infamous “one drop rule” practiced in 20th century America said that any person with even one ancestor of African (“one drop” of black blood) is considered black. The introduction of racial purity was a source of much havoc and sorrow in the lives of the people.
The source of discrimination has a long history and did not just originate during the colonial period. The word “Caste” originates from the word “Casta” which was developed in Moorish Spain to discriminate against Jews and Muslims. It is possible that these misguided ideas later morphed into the Mestizo concept practiced in Latin America. Interestingly, studies say that up to 90% of Mexicans are mestizos.
In the case of India, there has been a particular fascination for fair skin, but it had always been balanced in the past. Two of the most famous gods in the Indian culture are “Rama” and “Krishna”. But were dark skinned so much so that Krishna is a synonym for dark skin in India. At the same time, it is interesting that Indians prefer to paint the pictures of Rama and Krishna in blue rather than dark brown. By painting the pictures in blue, many Indians lose the chance to look at their past in a more objective manner.
Power and Privilege:
Skin color is also tied to power and privilege. Northern Europe has made fun of Southern Europeans for their swarthy and dusky looks. Even within Caucasians, those who worked in the sun and did menial labor tended to be darker than those who stayed inside the homes. And staying at work without working was an expensive proposition. Only the truly wealthy could truly afford it. An angle of wealth and class crept into these discussions. The women of ancient Greece applied toxic white lead to their skin to lighten their complexion.
The rich took pride in their pale look and took care to cover themselves with an umbrella when out in the sun. This idea of skin preservation still plays out among the wealthy in countries like India, China, and Korea. But a transition happened recently. Pale skin in the west has become associated with indoor office-work while tanned skin has become associated with increased leisure time, sportiness and good health that comes with wealth and higher social status. Many rich Europeans and Americans take expensive holiday trips to exotic beaches which are in tropical climates. They pride on having the tanned look when they come back home. Hence having a tanned look sometimes becomes a proxy for wealth and status. Tanning beds emerged as an alternative to people who want a quick and intense tan at short notice. Unmindful of health consequences many people undergo the torture of being exposed to high concentrations of UV light, which probably is the human equivalent of being baked alive.
Now let us begin a scientific and evolutionary framework to analyze this issue. Skin color is closely tied to the presence of melanin in the skin. The more the melanin content, the darker skinned the person is. Melanin serves a very important purpose, it blocks ultraviolet (UV) radiation from entering the skin and damaging the body. Melanin is an effective absorbent of light; the pigment is able to dissipate over 99.9% of absorbed UV radiation. One of the consequences of UV radiation is that it can cause changes in DNA in the cells, which can, in turn, cause cancer. Research shows that as many as 90% of skin cancers are due to UV radiation. UV radiation also can damage the immune system, damage eyes, cause cataract, destroy collagen and age the skin. Hence African communities are naturally protected from harmful radiation from the sun and they need this as they are closer to the equator. Because of the earth’s tilt, the equatorial regions get more direct sunlight and are much hotter than the polar regions. Australia has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world, mainly because the southern hemisphere gets 15% more UV when compared to the north.
Melanin and Vitamin D:
The history of our species suggests that as humans originally had lighter skin covered in fur like other primates. To compensate for the loss of body hair, dark skin evolved to prevent UV light from destroying the skin. There was an interestingly evolutionary trade-off when humans moved out of Africa and into Asia and Europe. Vitamin D otherwise called the sunshine vitamin is usually created in the skin from sunlight. Our bodies manufacture vitamin D when the UV rays interact with 7-dehydrocholesterol (7-DHC) present in the skin. Because Melanin prevents sunlight from entering the skin, people with dark skin have a difficult time creating Vitamin D. Lack of Vitamin D creates its own set of issues.
Vitamin D is required for calcium absorption in the body. Without Vitamin D, intestinal calcium absorption can fall to 15% of normal. Vitamin D deficiency may also lead to bacterial and viral infections; rickets, osteomalacia and osteoporosis, with increased risk of falls and fractures; increased risk of cancers; hypertension and cardiovascular disease; maturity onset diabetes; autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and Type 1 diabetes; and gum disease (Yuen and Jablonsky, 2010). This was enough to exert powerful evolutionary forces to impact human evolution towards fair skin in the northern latitudes where UV radiation is lesser.
What happens when dark-skinned people live in northern climates? The case of the Inuit people in Canada serves as an example of evolutionary adaptation. The Inuit cannot process enough Vitamin D because of their darker skins. But they get over this issue in two ways. Firstly, they seem to have evolved a better way to capture UV light through better and more efficient receptors on their skin (Frost, 2012) and they also eat food rich in Vitamin D like fatty fish.
Why women are fairer:
Researchers also posit that females overall tend to be fairer than males for a particular reason. They need to process Vitamin D and folate not just for themselves but also for growing embryos. Folate is one of the B-vitamins and is needed to make red and white blood cells in the bone marrow, convert carbohydrates into energy, and produce DNA and RNA. Adequate folate intake is extremely important during periods of rapid growth such as pregnancy, infancy, and adolescence. Inadequate folate has been linked to neural tube disorders (NTD’s) in babies. NTDs are a group of serious birth defects that affect the developing nervous system and include anencephaly, spina bifida, and encephalocele. It can reduce by up to 80% by consuming Folic acid. UV radiation produces Vitamin D but ends up destroying Folates.
For women near the equator, their dark skin would have lesser Vitamin D but would have more folates. For women in the north, they have more Vitamin D and would theoretically have fewer folates. But since UV radiation is not strong in the north, the women could get away with less folate damage and thereby have the better of both worlds. Brown skin does a similar role and tries to get the best of both worlds. The “vitamin D–folate hypothesis”, is a popular theory for why human skin color has evolved as an apparent adaption to UV environments.
The tanning phenomenon:
Tanning is a relatively recent phenomenon which was probably jumpstarted when Niels Fensen was awarded the Nobel prize in 1903 for his “Finsen Light Therapy”. His theory of phototherapy states that certain wavelengths of light can have beneficial medical effects. His therapy was a cure for diseases such as lupus vulgaris and rickets. This research soon became popular and by 1913, the British Royalty was looking at sunbathing as a desirable activity.
By the 1920s, the therapeutic effect of the sun was widely promoted, and two well-publicized French personalities gave “tanning” a fashion boost. Coco Chanel, of designer fame, returned to Paris after a cruise on the Duke of Westminster’s yacht with a tan that became all the rage. And the natural caramel skin color of singer Josephine Baker made women all over the world try to emulate her skin tone. Just before the 1930s, sunlight therapy became a popularly subscribed cure for almost every ailment from simple fatigue to tuberculosis. In the 1940s, advertisements started appearing in women’s magazines which encouraged sunbathing. At the same time, swimsuits’ skin coverage began decreasing, with the bikini radically changing swimsuit style after it made its appearance in 1946. Swimwear, once designed to cover skin, now exposed it. Cosmetics went from white to beige. In the 1950s, the first self-tanning product came on the market (The Chemical Research Foundation, 2001)
Genetic mechanisms:
One gene, SLC24A5 represents as much as 25–40% of the average skin tone difference between Europeans and West Africans. This seems to have originated in Turkey and Iran around 30000 years ago and later moved to Europe (after the advent of farming) about 8000 years ago. This has been closely linked to the need for Vitamin D in northerly climates. This gene has 2 alleles or forms, which differ by only one nucleotide, changing the 111th amino acid from alanine to threonine. Alanine and threonine differ by one OH bond. The addition of one OH bond explains the origin of much of misery and suffering which the world has seen and continues to witness.
Alanine is found in 93 to 100% of samples of Sub-Saharan Africans, East Asians, and Indigenous Americans. Threonine (Alanine with an additional OH bond) is found in 98.7 to 100% of the alleles in European samples. In addition to SLC24A5, other genes such as SLC45A2, HERC2, TYR, OCA2, and KITLG have also been found to play roles in skin color. HERC2 and OCA2 have their origins in Africa around a million years ago and are still present among the San people.
In the case of East Asians, they seem to have approached skin lightening in a totally different direction. East Asians do not have the same alleles as the European population. The gene OCA2 plays an important role in the convergent skin lightening of East Asians (Yang et al, 2016). DCT and ATRN are the other genes which play roles in East Asian skin color.
Interestingly, gene MFSD12 which imparts a deep dark hue also seem to be positively selected for. This gene is found in high frequencies in people with the darkest skin and is found in Melanesians, Australian Aborigines, and some Indians. This is an indicator that dark colors may have been once a sign of beauty in a different age and time.
Melanin and cholesterol:
The human body reacts to lesser sunlight by creating more cholesterol. The idea is to create as much Vitamin D as possible with the limited sunlight. Remember, UV+Cholesterol=Vitamin D. This is the reason why cholesterol levels are higher in the winters when compared to summers.
Melanin and Nicotine:
Nicotine has been found to have an affinity for Melanin and this has been proposed as a reason why dark-skinned individuals have increased dependence on nicotine and more issues in ceasing to smoke.
Melanin and hair color:
There are 3 types of melanin: eumelanin, pheomelanin, and neuromelanin. Black hair is caused by large amounts of eumelanin. Brown hair is caused by moderate amounts of eumelanin. Blond hair is caused by very little eumelanin and red hair caused by large amounts of pheomelanin mixed with little eumelanin. In people of European descent, light hair color may darken as individuals grow older. For example, blond-haired children often have darker hair by the time they are teenagers. Researchers speculate that certain hair-pigment proteins are activated as children grow older, perhaps in response to hormonal changes that occur near puberty.
Albinism:
The lack of melanin can cause its own issues. Melanin functions in the normal development of various parts of the eye, including the iris, retina, eye muscles, and optic nerve. The absence of melanin results in abnormal development of eyes and leads to problems with focusing, and depth perception. Albinos, face these issues because of the lack of melanin. The connection between albinism and deafness is well known, though poorly understood.
White or brown or black:
As you can see, skin color is a product of evolution, history, and society. What we see in present-day society can be different from the past. The global skin lightening industry is estimated to be 5 to 10 billion dollars. Similarly, the global tanning industry is also worth 5 to 10 billion dollars. There are probably as many people wanting to become dark (in Europe and the US) as there are people wanting to become fair (in Africa). In a society of pale people, darker people stand out and probably have higher mating value. In a society of dark people, fair people stand out and probably have higher mating value.
Let me close with the words of Mark Twain in “Following the Equator”:
- - is not an unbearably unpleasant complexion when it keeps to itself, but when it comes into competition with masses of brown and black the fact is betrayed that it is endurable only because we are used to it. Nearly all black and brown skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare. How rare, one may learn by walking down a street in Paris, New York, or London on a week-day — particularly an unfashionable street — and keeping count of the satisfactory complexions encountered in the course of a mile. Where dark complexions are massed, they make the whites look bleached-out, unwholesome, and sometimes frankly ghastly. I could notice this as a boy, down South in the slavery days before the war.
The splendid black satin skin of the South African Zulus of Durban seemed to me to come very close to perfection. I can see those Zulus yet — ‘ricksha athletes waiting in front of the hotel for custom; handsome and intensely black creatures, moderately clothed in loose summer stuffs whose snowy whiteness made the black all the blacker by contrast.
No end of people whose skins are dull and characterless modifications of the tint which we miscall white. Some of these faces are pimply; some exhibit other signs of diseased blood; some show scars of a tint out of a harmony with the surrounding shades of color. The white man’s complexion makes no concealments. It can’t. It seemed to have been designed as a catch-all for everything that can damage it. Ladies have to paint it, and powder it, and cosmetic it, and diet it with arsenic, and enamel it, and be always enticing it, and persuading it, and pestering it, and fussing at it, to make it beautiful; and they do not succeed. But these efforts show what they think of the natural complexion, as distributed. As distributed it needs these helps. The complexion which they try to counterfeit is one which nature restricts to the few — to the very few. To ninety-nine persons she gives a bad complexion, to the hundredth a good one. The hundredth can keep it — how long? Ten years, perhaps.
The advantage is with the Zulu, I think. He starts with a beautiful complexion, and it will last him through. And as for the Indian brown — firm, smooth, blemishless, pleasant and restful to the eye, afraid of no color, harmonizing with all colors and adding a grace to them all — I think there is no sort of chance for the average white complexion against that rich and perfect tint.
