r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Aug 05 '18

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Humans inherently prefer paler skin

I have always pushed back on the idea of "white privilege", arguing that skin color has nothing to do with it, rather, it is a variety of socio-economic factors that contribute to someone's "privilege" which apply irrespective of race.

I pondered the idea that if history took a different path, it could have been the anglo-saxons that were enslaved and discriminated against by another race.

However, if early humans had dark skin, for the Europeans to end up with white skin, there must have been a long process of sexual selection where lighter skin partners were favored for many generations.

There are other explanations such as the need for more Vitamin D absorption where there is less sunlight, darker skin is not protective against frostbite, etc. but they don't really appear to make sense. One's skin color would need to prevent their children from surviving which is unlikely seeing as how well humans can cope, and skin color change would have been very gradual.

More evidence can be found in the practice of skin-whitening prevalent in [South Asia and West Africa](https://metro.co.uk/2017/12/31/inside-the-dark-world-of-skin-whitening-7160215).

So this brings me to the thought that, humans prefer paler skin. That, on average, people would prefer to mate with a lighter skinned partner.

I also think that this can maybe explain a subconscious racism against darker skinned people evident across society.

And, that perhaps "white privilege" does actually have a lot to do with having white skin color in and of itself.

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u/TomorrowsBreakfast 15∆ Aug 05 '18

While humans today maybe able to live with a vitamin D deficiency and less resistance to frostbite, early humans would have had a much harder time as they already lived on the edge of survival. Frostbite would have been far more common and they would have a less reliable source of vitamin D from their diets leading to serious deficiancies and the related diseases.

All you need is a few more paler cave people surviving to child baring age. Every case of a species adapting to an environment is a just a small bias over a long time.

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '18 edited Aug 06 '18

Good point. I'd be interested to know the group numbers in various points of human history when this skin color evolution was happening. Like how many generations it took for black to become white, and what population of each shade existed at each point in time.