Skin colour should be no more socially relevant than webbed feet or earwax production
Over a third of people who are not white have experienced racial assault, and 77% of Black people have been racially abused in the UK.
So, acting as a helpful reminder, it’s vital for universal acknowledgment among intolerant racists that every single human ever descends from ancestors with Black-coloured skin. Racial intolerants not only commit atrocities but are constantly disrespecting their ancestors.
Skin colour is just one of countless genetic divergences that have occurred geographically among separated populations over time. It is no more socially relevant than other genetic variances that could have been used to divide populations, such as whether you have webbed feet or wet or dry ear wax. The quantity of melanin within skin directly determines the colour of skin; that is all.
When all of our ancestors lived near the equatorial sun in Africa, the strong sunlight caused them to develop high levels of folate, an essential B vitamin in the blood. This subsequently caused humans to evolve to produce melanin, a dark brown pigment of the skin that acts as a natural sunscreen to safeguard the body’s folate stores and skin against the sun.
In countries closer to the equator, the supply of vitamin D is adequate as there is enough UV light to penetrate darker skin. However, as our ancestors migrated further from the equatorial sun, there was not sufficient UV light to breach the skin, which was combated by high levels of melanin protecting the skin—especially during the winter months when health was majorly compromised. The sun is vital in the body’s ability to produce vitamin D, which is essential for the immune system and in fighting cancers and heart disease.
As such, darker skin became a disadvantage in northern climates, and the evolutionary response was to lose pigmentation so individuals with less melanin could receive the benefits of the sun. There is more UV to block at the equator because there is an excess of sun for what the body needs; those populations do not need to receive all the vitamin D on offer due to the constant sun, so melanin was retained to fight unwanted rays.
Prior to the early modern period in Europe and since the beginning of history, skin colour always meant difference but not systematically differential treatment. It took a few elderly, moustached white colonials for skin colour to start taking on a significantly different meaning for the rest of time.
Writing in The Guardian, Neil Singh wrote:
“It became convenient for white people to divide up the world according to their preference – into those who would labour hardest and those who would benefit most from the wealth this produced.”
Irene Silverblatt, a professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University, described how the Spanish were the first to systematically divide the world by skin colour in the 17th century: “white, Black and brown [became] abridged, abstracted versions of coloniser, slave and colonised”.
It is so simple it is frustrating. A small group of people with firearms wanted more land and money, crossed seas in ships, stole what they saw and took people into forced labour by bounding them to ships. Since then, people will always have prejudice—even if they do not realise it—engraining itself in society.
The term “racist” shouldn’t have to exist, but it is essential. It shouldn’t exist because to discriminate based on who has more versus less pigment in their skin is the epitome of irrelevance and stupidity; like facial features, it is out of our control. Children aren’t born to divide by skin colour, but our engrained society teaches them to; growing up, they subconsciously take on detrimental, preconceived views.
The fact that many immigrants are from ethnic minorities invigorates hatred for their skin colour. White people struggling financially will look to someone to blame, and poverty-struck immigrants who cannot defend themselves provide an easy target. These are people who “apparently” take jobs that Westerners do not want to do in the first place.
If a group is constantly marginalised because of their skin, they may react with sheer anger. If any group of people is constantly marginalised, it is natural for them to want out of the discrimination that leads them to struggle financially or prevents them from garnering the same opportunities that others receive. Skin colour has no means of changing a personality; only bullies in society do.
