'The whiter, the better'?

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What if your white and nerdy?

Dont bother with this guy, this is his like 5th account in the last 2 months? I'm still kind of unsure though if he's trolling, or just wears his ignorance on his shirt like a badge of honor. He'll get himself banned in a week or so anyways. I admire his persistence though.

I have travelled in Latin America. Everywhere I encountered this view: the whiter the skin (rich or poor doesn't matter), the higher your status.
What could be the explanation for this phenomenon?

Blondes Have Deeper Roots
By Steve Sailer – June 12, 2005
http://vdare.com/sailer/050612_blondes.htm

A couple of decades ago, I began noticing that the leading lady in a movie was almost always fairer-skinned than her leading man.
It appears filmmakers and their audiences subconsciously associate lightness of complexion with femininity. Yet, nobody ever seems to talk about it.
Medieval Europeans referred to women as "the fair sex," but in contemporary discourse, skin color is associated only with race, not with sex.
…
When the Internet came along in the 1990s, I discovered that an anthropologist at Université Laval in Quebec named Peter Frost had been researching for years this question of why actresses were so fair, and much else besides.
…
It turns out that this favoritism toward lighter skinned women is not an invention of Hollywood. …
In his foreword to Fair Women, Dark Men, U. of Washington sociologist Pierre L. van den Berghe, author of one of my favorite books, The Ethnic Phenomenon, summarizes:
"Although virtually all cultures express a marked preference for fair female skin, even those with little or no exposure to European imperialism, and even those whose members are heavily pigmented, many are indifferent to male pigmentation or even prefer men to be darker."
...
Frost reports that out of 51 different cultures in the anthropology profession's famous Human Relations Area Files, 44 cultures favored lighter complexions on either only women (30) or on both sexes (14). In only 3 cultures was fair skin preferred on men only, and in just 4 cultures was darker skin desired.
...
Lighter ladies were favored in many countries with little exposure to Western beauty standards, such as medieval Japan, Ethiopia, Aztec Mexico, and Moorish Spain, where the dominant culture was darker skinned than the conquered natives.
Frost discovered that the reason women were called "the fair sex" is because women are indeed fairer on average after puberty. He notes that 50 out of 54 anthropometric studies from around the world have shown that women's untanned skin, such as under the upper arm, reflects more light than men's. Women have more subcutaneous fat, which gives them a lighter look.
...
… the fairness fad has been growing in Africa as more affluent women get office jobs, leading to a rapid increase in the sales of often-dangerous whitening creams.
...
Frost also points out a corollary of this sexual selection for lightness:
"Since higher-ranking men marry the more attractive women, the upper classes tend to lighten in color with each passing generation, as in India."
...
This seems particularly true in Latin America, where the elites remain quite white-looking despite almost 500 years of intermarriage. The trick is that the most successful short, dark men often wed tall, blonde women and have more European-looking offspring, thus replenishing the caste system.

A Euro Vision of Beauty?
Monday 02 November 2009
Dr Amina Mire

Since women of colour began using skin whitening products in response to racial oppression in eighteenth century America, unlike legal slavery, the trade has grown not died. Worse still is that what was once used to mask women of African origin desperate to pass in a white society that often deemed their natural skin ugly and unacceptable, it now provides a Venetian mask for all women of colour.

Living in fear: Tanzania's albinos
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7518049.stm
Page last updated at 18:15 GMT, Monday, 21 July 2008 19:15 UK

Twenty-five people with albinism have been murdered in Tanzania since March, a BBC investigation has found.

Albinos are targeted for body parts that are used in witchcraft, and killings continue despite government efforts to stamp out the grisly practice, the BBC's Karen Allen says.
Once, albinos used to seek shelter from the sun. Now they have gone into hiding simply to survive, after a series of killings linked to witchcraft.

I don't know but in the earlier days it was definitely prevalent. The reason for white being a sign of status back then was that most peasants labored outdoors. So those who weren't tanned by the sun were far more likely to have a higher status ie. not working under the sun all day.

Also white skin is more or less a cultural thing. There are other factors that have also attributed to a sign of wealth such as long nails, bound feet, a person's figure, facial paint, length of knecks, size of breasts, ideal facial features, and other factors ppl don't bother to ask because it is something almost subconscious in us. We tend to mimick what we see in our status oriented cultures.

How do you know it's BS?

Makes sense. Here in Australia families with aboriginal ancestry until very recently hushed it up as a shameful part of their heritage.