The vile attitude toward dark skin is reflected in the way the cosmetic companies market these products. The TV commercials for Fair And Handsome feature men who are sad outcasts and can't get women because they're too dark. Just a little cream and the ladies swoon over their new, light complexion!

Ages and ages ago, there was a time when darkness, as a concept, was not evil. Darkness was the night, the soil, the strongest trees, the womb. Mysterious but nourishing, alive, full of power. White was for death and sickness. Thousands of years later, civilization, slavery, societal hierarchies, xenophobia, fear of disease and ignorance have flipped the script, so to speak. All too often, around the world — including in this country — black is bad. (Please refresh your memory with this video by Kiri Davis, in which young children point to identical black and white dolls and proclaim the white doll "good" and the black doll "bad." It's a 2006 recreation of a 1950s test, with similar results.) I wish I didn't have to keep typing these same words over and over again, but here goes: This is the same reason we counted the number of black models on the fashion week runways and look for black models in fashion magazines. If the world around you reminds you every day that your skin tone is neither fashionable nor desirable, how can you be expected to think otherwise?

In India, Fairness Is A Growth Industry [Washington Post]
Related: Fair And Handsome commercial [AOL Video]
Fair And Handsome commercial [You Tube]
Fair And Lovely commercial (Moral: No matter how good an actress you are, you can't be a star unless your skin is pale!) [Daily Motion]
A Girl Like Me [Google Video]
Earlier: Can One Woman Make A Difference? Maybe, If She Works For A Global Beauty Company
Indian Women Whiten Their Skin, Fight The Patriarchy
Study:Men Are More Attracted To Women With Lighter Skin
Skin Deep
Modeling Matriarch Continues To Demand Diversity On The Runways
Is Prada To Blame For the Lack Of Black Models?

Ms. Lloyd notes that her daughter goes to "one of those anxiously progressive places in San Francisco" where parents are parents are dismayed to find color-consciousness in their children. Ms. Lloyd finds herself asking, "Why would little Chelsea declare she will be friends only with other little blond girls? Why would three little white boys get it in their brain to exclude the darkest-skinned boy? None of it made much sense."


Ms. Lloyd thinks the interviews of 4-and 5-year olds the researchers conducted aren't very reliable, and she points a finger at the media and toy culture, "that designs too many princesses with alabaster skin, too many handsome princes and superheroes as tall white guys." (If you have a chance, watch the 2006 seven-minute documentary A Girl Like Me. It recreates the "doll test" originally done in the 1940s: young black kids, who, when given two dolls, identical except for skin color, choose the white doll as the "nice" doll and the black doll as the "bad" doll.) To be honest, the Italian study seems problematic anyway you slice it: The researchers presented white children, aged 4-7, with a drawing of a white child and a black child, and asked which one they would prefer to play with. Then they were also asked which child they thought their mother and father would prefer them to play with.

Around 80% of the children said they thought their parents would prefer them to play with the white child, giving similar percentages for their mothers and fathers. Similarly, around three quarters of the children said they thought their mother and father would prefer to meet a white adult rather than a black adult, and that their parents would allocate more positive traits to a white adult than to a black adult.

As for the girl named Chelsea declaring she only wants blond friends, isn't childhood all about defining things? Recognizing things that are alike, and things that are different? How many times do kids do exercises in which they're instructed, "circle only the kittens" or "place only the blue marbles in the jar"? And just like wanting to be a fireman can be a phase, so can being friends with only blonds. That said, parents obviously can pass racism on to their kids, as we know all too well. (Remember Prussian Blue?) But does this particular study prove that mothers (more than fathers) are the ones to blame? And if children are not developing prejudice from their parents, where are they getting it from?

Do children acquire racism from their mothers? [British Psychological Society Research Digest Blog]
Do Mothers Pass On Racism More than Fathers? [New York Times Freakanomics]
Mama Made Me Racist! [Salon]
Earlier: Teenage Racist 'Folk' Singers Admit Their Own White Guilt
Related: A Girl Like Me, (Video)
Kids Copy Parents' Mistakes [PopSciBlog]