Why Some People Are Different Colors
We’re all the same, but people focus on this difference the most
Some people have light skin, other people have dark skin. For some reason a lot of the lighter skinned people make a huge fuss over this. Biological racism or scientific racism is a belief that tries to use observable evidence to prove that white people are somehow better than everyone else. Unsurprisingly, it’s a bullshit pseudoscience that has been debunked by actual research time and time again. But skin color is generally the first thing we see in a person, so let’s take a look at how different skin colors came to be.
The first humans on Earth were dark skinned people in Africa. Over time, the first humans migrated from Africa to Europe, Asia, and the Americas, as well as Australia later on in history. So if everyone was black, where did all the white people come from?
To understand what happened, we need to understand what skin color actually does for humans. In short, our skin has a love/hate relationship with the sun. UV rays from the sun can cause skin damage in the form of sunburn, as well as reduce the amount of folate in the body. However, those same UV rays are needed for our body to naturally produce vitamin D. Melanin, which is the pigment that determines our skin color, is our first and only natural defense against the harmful effects of UV radiation. The more melanin in your skin, the less damage UV rays can cause. On the other hand, more melanin can also make it difficult for your body to produce vitamin D, especially in less sunny climates.
Africa for the most part is very sunny. People there had no need to evolve since even with their darker skin they were getting enough vitamin D while being protected from the harmful effects of the sun. As you move further north of the equator, the weather gets much more cloudy. With less radiation from the sun, people in Europe and Asia needed less melanin so they could produce vitamin D. Evolution stepped in, and a mutation occurred resulting in lighter skin.
So why are some white people lighter skinned than others? This is most likely due to the diet of different areas. Some groups focused more on agriculture, where others ate a lot of fish which is high in vitamin D. Since they were getting high amounts of vitamin D from their diet, they could retain some of the melanin needed to protect themselves from the sun.
Today, we can take supplements and add vitamins to our food, and sunblock can protect us from UV rays. So from a biological standpoint, skin color is becoming largely irrelevant. Despite evidence that shows people are extremely similar regardless of where they live, some people still use skin color as a way to divide the population of the world into different races. Scientifically speaking, these people are wrong. A race in biology is a genetically distinct subgroup of a species. Genetic studies show that any two humans will have more in common genetically than they will have differences. If a white person has so much genetic material in common with a black person, would the white person be considered a part of the black race? No, because there isn’t a black race, just like there isn’t a white race. We’re all one species that doesn’t have subgroups, and the science is very clear on that.
Sadly, to many people the science doesn’t matter since they deny anything that clashes with their worldview, and unfortunately, many of these people are the ones with the power to change things for the better. While I am hopeful for a more human race positive future, the cultural divide that was fabricated centuries ago has proven difficult to break down.
The moral of the story is that humans adapt to their environments, so we should work to make sure that black lives aren’t oppressed or killed in their environments.
