Dark skin consumes more energy, fair skin evolved to save energy for other organs (?)

[Maleth]

It seems like European descent ppl tend to have a fondness for dark skin women, where as Asian ppl don't.

That is a generic statement. That can hold true for maybe central and Northern Europeans men but not so much in the south of Europe. Also seem to be the case the other way round.

 

[Angela]

Minty;483081]Neanderthals, who ranged from Western Europe to Central Asia, probably had the same distribution of skin color as modern humans, including fair skin and freckles. Fair skin is an advantage at northern latitudes because it is more efficient at generating vitamin D from weak sunlight. Freckles are clusters of cells that overproduce melanin granules; they are triggered by exposure to sunlight and are most noticeable on pale skin. BNC2 is one of several skin color genes and it influences saturation of skin color and freckling. It is a Neanderthal gene and is found in Eurasian populations, most commonly in Europeans (70% have at least one copy of the Neanderthal version).

Europeans did not get their major effect de-pigmentation genes from Neanderthals. There's been a lot of research on the subject of pigmentation, and a lot of discussion of it on this thread in the last year or two.

This is just one of them:
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...sh-populations?highlight=de-pigmentation+snps

It seems like European descent ppl tend to have a fondness for dark skin women, where as Asian ppl don't.

That's patently not true for a lot of Europeans.

Recent research suggests, people in China, Japan and other East Asian countries have about 20 percent more Neanderthal DNA than do Europeans. It is now scientifically irrefutable fact that the "human species" has been found to contain a substantial quantity of DNA (at least 20%) from other hominid populations not classified as Homo sapien; such as Neanderthal, Denisovan, African archaic, Homo erectus, and now possibly even "Hobbit" (Homo floresiensis).

We know. There are numerous threads on the various papers on the subject published within the last year or so. You can use the search engine to find them.

Could ppl with African genes that look white find dark women more attractive than ppl who don't? I am thinking that the preferences might not be just cultural but it is embedded in your genes.

Seriously?

 

[vcovaci]

An interesting new theory:

Dark skin provides better protection against things such as microbes, sun, or water loss, but consumes more energy - energy that could otherwise be used for development of other organs (such as for example brain, perhaps?)

Quite plausible. The idea that light skin evolved to promote vitamin D synthesis at northern latitudes seems to me less and less probable. If it would be so then why people of African origin tend to have higher bone density compared to Caucasians even when living in Europe or North America? It's known that vtiamin D plays a crucial role in bone health and development (through promoting calcium absorption), isn't it? We can't get it in decent quantities from our usual food, unless we eat regularly a lot of oceanic fish.

 

[LeBrok]

Quite plausible. The idea that light skin evolved to promote vitamin D synthesis at northern latitudes seems to me less and less probable. If it would be so then why people of African origin tend to have higher bone density compared to Caucasians even when living in Europe or North America? It's known that vtiamin D plays a crucial role in bone health and development (through promoting calcium absorption), isn't it? We can't get it in decent quantities from our usual food, unless we eat regularly a lot of oceanic fish.

So how do we get most of D3 we need?

 

[Angela]

In terms of African Americans I assume you're referring to this study?

"Among the nearly 1,200 black adults in his study, the average total vitamin D level was just shy of 16 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL), versus almost 26 ng/mL among 900 white adults.
In general, levels below 20 ng/mL are considered a vitamin D deficiency."

Yet, "on balance, black and white adults had similar levels of "bioavailable" vitamin D -- the kind that their bodies can actually use."

Differences in certain gene variants between SSAs and Europeans seem to explain it:

"Thadhani's team looked at study participants' levels of vitamin D-binding protein, which basically locks up the vitamin, away from body cells' use. It turned out that blacks also had lower levels of vitamin D-binding protein. So on balance, black and white adults had similar levels of "bioavailable" vitamin D -- the kind that their bodies can actually use.

Thadhani said that gene variations appeared to explain most of the difference in people's levels of the vitamin D-binding protein. Most blacks adults carried a gene variant linked to lower levels of the protein, while fewer than half of whites did."

However, given how many modern food products, including not only milk but also cereals and breads, are enriched with Vitamin D, I don't know how much looking at the Vitamin D levels of Africans living in higher latitudes can tell us.

I think modern humans are doing a lot in terms of insulating themselves from evolution caused by natural selection.

 

[vcovaci]

Why there would be this difference in the levels of vitamin D-binding protein? Why would most black adults carry this gene variant?

 

[bicicleur 2]

In terms of African Americans I assume you're referring to this study?

"Among the nearly 1,200 black adults in his study, the average total vitamin D level was just shy of 16 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL), versus almost 26 ng/mL among 900 white adults.
In general, levels below 20 ng/mL are considered a vitamin D deficiency."

Yet, "on balance, black and white adults had similar levels of "bioavailable" vitamin D -- the kind that their bodies can actually use."

Differences in certain gene variants between SSAs and Europeans seem to explain it:

"Thadhani's team looked at study participants' levels of vitamin D-binding protein, which basically locks up the vitamin, away from body cells' use. It turned out that blacks also had lower levels of vitamin D-binding protein. So on balance, black and white adults had similar levels of "bioavailable" vitamin D -- the kind that their bodies can actually use.

Thadhani said that gene variations appeared to explain most of the difference in people's levels of the vitamin D-binding protein. Most blacks adults carried a gene variant linked to lower levels of the protein, while fewer than half of whites did."

However, given how many modern food products, including not only milk but also cereals and breads, are enriched with Vitamin D, I don't know how much looking at the Vitamin D levels of Africans living in higher latitudes can tell us.

I think modern humans are doing a lot in terms of insulating themselves from evolution caused by natural selection.

it seems like blacks and whites have a different history of natural selection which produced a different strategy for acquiring 'bioavailable' vitamine D
it might be that a balanced diet for whites is not a balanced diet for blacks and vice versa

 

[Minty]

Europeans did not get their major effect de-pigmentation genes from Neanderthals. There's been a lot of research on the subject of pigmentation, and a lot of discussion of it on this thread in the last year or two.

This is just one of them:
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...sh-populations?highlight=de-pigmentation+snps

I am still reading, there are a lot to read.

That's patently not true for a lot of Europeans.

I tend to find there are many mixed children with dark complexions when I go shopping in Auchan (French hypermarket). In Asia, very little people would consider interbreeding with Africans, and many prefer light skinned women.

When I typed Europeans marrying blacks or Asians instead of getting Europe's stats I am getting America's stats so here they are:

Marriage Patterns for Six Largest
Asian American Ethnic Groups (2010)
(Updated Nov. 2011)
Asian Indians
All Spouses USR + USR or FR USR + USR Only
Men
Asian Indian 92.5 76.9 62.4
Other Asian 1.5 4.2 4.5
White 4.3 13.3 25.6
Black 0.3 0.9 0.7
Hispanic/Latino 0.8 2.5 3.5
Multiracial & All Others 0.6 2.1 3.4
Population Size (x1000) 701.6 62.1 32.1

Women
Asian Indian 92.9 70.6 52.0
Other Asian 0.9 1.9 2.9
White 4.7 22.6 37.8
Black 0.5 1.8 2.8
Hispanic/Latino 0.4 1.4 2.1
Multiracial & All Others 0.7 1.7 2.4
Population Size (x1000) 691.6 68.3 39.2

Chinese
Men
Chinese 88.8 63.9 53.6
Other Asian 4.8 12.9 14.8
White 5.2 19.2 26.5
Black 0.1 0.1 0.2
Hispanic/Latino 0.7 2.1 2.6
Multiracial & All Others 0.5 1.7 2.3
Population Size (x1000) 707.0 140.8 96.8

Women
Chinese 79.9 52.4 46.1
Other Asian 3.5 9.9 10.4
White 14.5 31.9 37.7
Black 0.3 0.7 0.7
Hispanic/Latino 0.9 2.8 2.8
Multiracial & All Others 0.8 2.3 2.4
Population Size (x1000) 777.9 138.5 112.6

Filipinos
Men
Filipino 85.1 54.2 42.1
Other Asian 2.6 7.1 7.9
White 7.9 24.0 31.8
Black 0.2 1.0 1.4
Hispanic/Latino 2.8 9.0 11.0
Multiracial & All Others 1.4 4.7 5.8
Population Size (x1000) 440.8 99.2 71.3

Women
Filipino 61.6 36.7 29.1
Other Asian 2.6 6.2 6.4
White 27.0 37.2 42.7
Black 2.6 4.0 4.4
Hispanic/Latino 3.7 8.1 8.5
Multiracial & All Others 2.6 7.8 8.9
Population Size (x1000) 608.7 121.0 102.2

Japanese
All Spouses USR + USR or FR USR + USR Only
Men
Japanese 62.8 54.5 53.8
Other Asian 11.5 14.2 12.2
White 18.8 22.8 25.1
Blacks 0.2 0.3 0.3
Hispanic/Latino 3.3 3.8 3.6
Multiracial & All Others 3.5 4.5 4.9
Population Size (x1000) 151.1 104.7 91.2

Women
Japanese 44.4 48.9 49.3
Other Asian 8.0 12.2 11.0
White 38.1 29.4 29.9
Black 2.1 0.7 0.8
Hispanic/Latino 3.2 3.7 3.9
Multiracial & All Others 4.1 5.1 5.2
Population Size (x1000) 212.6 104.3 99.7

Koreans
Men
Korean 90.4 61.1 44.8
Other Asian 2.9 10.4 13.0
White 5.3 23.1 34.6
Black 0.2 0.8 1.2
Hispanic/Latino 0.9 3.7 5.3
Multiracial & All Others 0.4 0.7 1.1
Population Size (x1000) 265.4 47.8 30.2

Women
Korean 68.1 35.4 24.1
Other Asian 3.6 9.2 9.8
White 24.4 48.4 57.7
Black 1.4 1.6 1.9
Hispanic/Latino 1.3 2.7 3.3
Multiracial & All Others 1.2 2.7 3.3
Population Size (x1000) 351.5 72.6 58.4

Vietnamese
Men
Vietnamese 92.6 71.0 59.0
Other Asian 3.4 11.9 13.7
White 2.8 13.1 21.9
Black 0.0 0.2 0.4
Hispanic/Latino 0.5 2.6 3.3
Multiracial & All Others 0.6 1.3 1.6
Population Size (x1000) 299.7 44.9 26.8

Women
Vietnamese 84.6 56.3 40.6
Other Asian 4.2 11.1 12.2
White 9.4 28.7 41.3
Black 0.2 0.5 0.5
Hispanic/Latino 0.9 2.9 4.5
Multiracial & All Others 0.7 0.5 0.8
Population Size (x1000) 323.6 54.4 35.0

USR = U.S.-Raised (1.5 generation or higher)
FR = Foreign-Raised (1st generation)
"USR + USR or FR" = Spouse 1 is USR while Spouse 2 can be USR or FR
"USR + USR Only" = Both spouses are USR
Methodology used to tabulate these statistics

As you can see the rates of Asians marrying blacks are very very low.

When I type in French, I get stats from France but not the rest of Europe, even I typed Europeans not French...

Aujourd'hui, ils sont 27% à repousser l'idée d'une union avec une personne d'origine arabe, 21% pour un Africain et 14% pour les Asiatiques, selon les chiffres d'un récent sondage Ifop pour l'hebdomadaire La Vie….

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-fr...i-la-france-compte-27-de-mariages-mixtes-.php

27% marrying Arabs (some Arabs are dark), 21% marrying African and 14% marrying Asians (some Asians are dark), that is a lot!!!

View attachment 7829

11.9 percent for black and white couple. That is not a lot, but much more than Asians marrying blacks. I don't live in the states but I tend to see a lot of white men with dark skinned women, but when I say dark skinned, they are not necessary black. 14.4 % for Asian white couple, but they don't specified what sorts of Asians, some Asians can be very dark like the ones shown in the pictures below, and by contrast some Asians can be very light.

Dark Asians marrying white men I found online.

We know. There are numerous threads on the various papers on the subject published within the last year or so. You can use the search engine to find them.

I am still reading them, too many things to read.

Seriously?

A lot of the reasons that people suggested are to do with culture. However, culture is created by humans, where do these ideas and preferences come from? I am thinking could it be innate? I have a friend who is very fond of the sun and brown skinned women. He has dated half blacks, half white, and many dark skinned Thai women, and he find dark skinned Indian women very attractive. He is French, so aside from that half black half white women from the Caribbeans ( French overseas departments), that has linguistic and cultural link with the French, the rest have no cultural or linguistic ties with the French.

Every time he goes to Thailand for vacation, he would proudly showed off how cool it is to get sunshine and to swim in the pool and go scuba diving in the seas, and how much he hates winter. Of course there are also the ladies, brown ladies, that he is so fond of. By contrast, Asian ppl would try to stay away from the sun as much as possible, and prefer light skinned ladies.



In fact, I think their beauty standards are not so different from those from China, Korea or Japan.

 

[elghund]

Why do you assume this is the case? I neither proffered my own preference nor suggested anything "universal." That aside, it's hardly a novel idea.

Touche!

I think it's pretty reasonable idea. Bird feathers and fish scales have both been subject to sexual selective forces. Why not human skin? Presumably though, light skin does help prevent Vitamin D deficiency in higher latitudes. But then again, light skin emerged in the Middle East, where climes were warm and there was plenty of sunshine year round.

 

[Angela]

I am still reading, there are a lot to read.





I tend to find there are many mixed children with dark complexions when I go shopping in Auchan (French hypermarket). In Asia, very little people would consider interbreeding with Africans, and many prefer light skinned women.

When I typed Europeans marrying blacks or Asians instead of getting Europe's stats I am getting America's stats so here they are:

Marriage Patterns for Six Largest
Asian American Ethnic Groups (2010)
(Updated Nov. 2011)
Asian Indians
All Spouses USR + USR or FR USR + USR Only
Men
Asian Indian 92.5 76.9 62.4
Other Asian 1.5 4.2 4.5
White 4.3 13.3 25.6
Black 0.3 0.9 0.7
Hispanic/Latino 0.8 2.5 3.5
Multiracial & All Others 0.6 2.1 3.4
Population Size (x1000) 701.6 62.1 32.1

Women
Asian Indian 92.9 70.6 52.0
Other Asian 0.9 1.9 2.9
White 4.7 22.6 37.8
Black 0.5 1.8 2.8
Hispanic/Latino 0.4 1.4 2.1
Multiracial & All Others 0.7 1.7 2.4
Population Size (x1000) 691.6 68.3 39.2

Chinese
Men
Chinese 88.8 63.9 53.6
Other Asian 4.8 12.9 14.8
White 5.2 19.2 26.5
Black 0.1 0.1 0.2
Hispanic/Latino 0.7 2.1 2.6
Multiracial & All Others 0.5 1.7 2.3
Population Size (x1000) 707.0 140.8 96.8

Women
Chinese 79.9 52.4 46.1
Other Asian 3.5 9.9 10.4
White 14.5 31.9 37.7
Black 0.3 0.7 0.7
Hispanic/Latino 0.9 2.8 2.8
Multiracial & All Others 0.8 2.3 2.4
Population Size (x1000) 777.9 138.5 112.6

Filipinos
Men
Filipino 85.1 54.2 42.1
Other Asian 2.6 7.1 7.9
White 7.9 24.0 31.8
Black 0.2 1.0 1.4
Hispanic/Latino 2.8 9.0 11.0
Multiracial & All Others 1.4 4.7 5.8
Population Size (x1000) 440.8 99.2 71.3

Women
Filipino 61.6 36.7 29.1
Other Asian 2.6 6.2 6.4
White 27.0 37.2 42.7
Black 2.6 4.0 4.4
Hispanic/Latino 3.7 8.1 8.5
Multiracial & All Others 2.6 7.8 8.9
Population Size (x1000) 608.7 121.0 102.2

Japanese
All Spouses USR + USR or FR USR + USR Only
Men
Japanese 62.8 54.5 53.8
Other Asian 11.5 14.2 12.2
White 18.8 22.8 25.1
Blacks 0.2 0.3 0.3
Hispanic/Latino 3.3 3.8 3.6
Multiracial & All Others 3.5 4.5 4.9
Population Size (x1000) 151.1 104.7 91.2

Women
Japanese 44.4 48.9 49.3
Other Asian 8.0 12.2 11.0
White 38.1 29.4 29.9
Black 2.1 0.7 0.8
Hispanic/Latino 3.2 3.7 3.9
Multiracial & All Others 4.1 5.1 5.2
Population Size (x1000) 212.6 104.3 99.7

Koreans
Men
Korean 90.4 61.1 44.8
Other Asian 2.9 10.4 13.0
White 5.3 23.1 34.6
Black 0.2 0.8 1.2
Hispanic/Latino 0.9 3.7 5.3
Multiracial & All Others 0.4 0.7 1.1
Population Size (x1000) 265.4 47.8 30.2

Women
Korean 68.1 35.4 24.1
Other Asian 3.6 9.2 9.8
White 24.4 48.4 57.7
Black 1.4 1.6 1.9
Hispanic/Latino 1.3 2.7 3.3
Multiracial & All Others 1.2 2.7 3.3
Population Size (x1000) 351.5 72.6 58.4

Vietnamese
Men
Vietnamese 92.6 71.0 59.0
Other Asian 3.4 11.9 13.7
White 2.8 13.1 21.9
Black 0.0 0.2 0.4
Hispanic/Latino 0.5 2.6 3.3
Multiracial & All Others 0.6 1.3 1.6
Population Size (x1000) 299.7 44.9 26.8

Women
Vietnamese 84.6 56.3 40.6
Other Asian 4.2 11.1 12.2
White 9.4 28.7 41.3
Black 0.2 0.5 0.5
Hispanic/Latino 0.9 2.9 4.5
Multiracial & All Others 0.7 0.5 0.8
Population Size (x1000) 323.6 54.4 35.0

USR = U.S.-Raised (1.5 generation or higher)
FR = Foreign-Raised (1st generation)
"USR + USR or FR" = Spouse 1 is USR while Spouse 2 can be USR or FR
"USR + USR Only" = Both spouses are USR
Methodology used to tabulate these statistics

As you can see the rates of Asians marrying blacks are very very low.

When I type in French, I get stats from France but not the rest of Europe, even I typed Europeans not French...

Aujourd'hui, ils sont 27% à repousser l'idée d'une union avec une personne d'origine arabe, 21% pour un Africain et 14% pour les Asiatiques, selon les chiffres d'un récent sondage Ifop pour l'hebdomadaire La Vie….

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-fr...i-la-france-compte-27-de-mariages-mixtes-.php

27% marrying Arabs (some Arabs are dark), 21% marrying African and 14% marrying Asians (some Asians are dark), that is a lot!!!

View attachment 7829

11.9 percent for black and white couple. That is not a lot, but much more than Asians marrying blacks. I don't live in the states but I tend to see a lot of white men with dark skinned women, but when I say dark skinned, they are not necessary black. 14.4 % for Asian white couple, but they don't specified what sorts of Asians, some Asians can be very dark like the ones shown in the pictures below, and by contrast some Asians can be very light.

Dark Asians marrying white men I found online.

View attachment 7830

View attachment 7831




I am still reading them, too many things to read.





A lot of the reasons that people suggested are to do with culture. However, culture is created by humans, where do these ideas and preferences come from? I am thinking could it be innate? I have a friend who is very fond of the sun and brown skinned women. He has dated half blacks, half white, and many dark skinned Thai women, and he find dark skinned Indian women very attractive. He is French, so aside from that half black half white women from the Caribbeans ( French overseas departments), that has linguistic and cultural link with the French, the rest have no cultural or linguistic ties with the French.

Every time he goes to Thailand for vacation, he would proudly showed off how cool it is to get sunshine and to swim in the pool and go scuba diving in the seas, and how much he hates winter. Of course there are also the ladies, brown ladies, that he is so fond of. By contrast, Asian ppl would try to stay away from the sun as much as possible, and prefer light skinned ladies.



In fact, I think their beauty standards are not so different from those from China, Korea or Japan.

Minty, you might want to review some of the posts upthread which discussed which "traits" are probably "hard-wired" in terms of attractiveness, most having to do with pro-creation in one form or another. Skin color preferences, from what I can see, are not hard-wired; they are the product of cultural inculcation. It probably starts with whatever is the dominant phenotype of the elite in a certain culture, the association with wealth, status and power then plays a part in it.

The East Asian countries are far more homogeneous genetically than are Europeans. There are papers that show all East Asians are as related to each other as first cousins in Europe. So, European descent people start out with a much greater variety of phenotypes among them. We're more open to seeing different phenotypes as attractive. Added to that, we have experienced migration flows from other parts of the world. All of that leads to a greater open-mindedness about what phenotypes are "attractive". That doesn't mean that European descent people all or even as a majority think that "dark skinned" people are more attractive. There are a lot of men who prefer pale skinned blue eyed blondes. That's one reason so many women dye their hair. There's a big difference between those two statements.

Also, and I mean no offense here, East Asian countries were for a long time "closed off" from the rest of the world, and I think some of that mind set remains. There are those who think these countries are much more "racist" than the west, not only with regard to blacks, but also with regard to "Caucasian", although that may be changing. Look at how the children of GIs and East Asian women were treated after World War II.

Each culture develops its own standards over time. While a male preference for young and therefore fertile women is probably universal, it sometimes seems to me that certain East Asian cultures sexualize very young looking women in ways that in the west would lean toward pedophilia.

Likewise, Europe and predominantly European descent countries have developed over time a broader definition of what constitutes "beauty".
So, I know a lot of men who think J Lo is beautiful. I don't think that means they prefer it to any other look. Variety is the spice of life, as they say.

The fact remains, however, that even in the U.S. marriage between "whites" and "blacks", while increasing in the last decades, is still very much a minority occurrence, although a lot of the avoidance involves social factors like poverty, education, etc.

 

[LeBrok]

Touche!

I think it's pretty reasonable idea. Bird feathers and fish scales have both been subject to sexual selective forces. Why not human skin? Presumably though, light skin does help prevent Vitamin D deficiency in higher latitudes. But then again, light skin emerged in the Middle East, where climes were warm and there was plenty of sunshine year round.

What are these? Can you explain?

 

[Angela]

Why there would be this difference in the levels of vitamin D-binding protein? Why would most black adults carry this gene variant?

If I understood it correctly, the levels of vitamin D binding protein are "lower" in black people. It's Europeans who have high levels of this vitamin D-binding protein. There was a sentence in the article to the effect that Europeans evolved to bind the Vitamin D away for "later" use. It didn't go into the mechanisms for how it would "later" be retrieved, but the idea might be that since there's so much sunshine in Africa, the people there didn't need to store it.

Bicicleur:it seems like blacks and whites have a different history of natural selection which produced a different strategy for acquiring 'bioavailable' vitamine D
it might be that a balanced diet for whites is not a balanced diet for blacks and vice versa

I think some of this is finally dawning on the medical community. The "European" diet also isn't good for Native Americans. I know that there's a lot of talk about the fact that medications are metabolized differently depending on ancestry as well, and that new models have to be created that don't just test "Europeans".

 

[vcovaci]

If I understood it correctly, the levels of vitamin D binding protein are "lower" in black people. It's Europeans who have high levels of this vitamin D-binding protein. There was a sentence in the article to the effect that Europeans evolved to bind the Vitamin D away for "later" use. It didn't go into the mechanisms for how it would "later" be retrieved, but the idea might be that since there's so much sunshine in Africa, the people there didn't need to store it.

Okay, but actually things are a little bit more complex. On one hand the D-binding protein (DBP) does indeed seem to store vitamin D for later use. On the other, this DBP may not be the only way the compound is preserved in our bodies.

All fat-soluble vitamins can be stored in the fatty tissues of your body if you get more than you need, unlike water-soluble vitamins, which wash out in urine. Excess vitamin D accumulates in the fat and liver, providing you with a vitamin D source to draw on if your stores run low.

Source: Does Vitamin D accumulate in Your System? (sfgate)

 

[vcovaci]

Could these two be complementary mechanisms?

 

[MOESAN]

It's for the most a cultural an varying result: some "politically correct" complex is arising in Europe. It's "cool" to marry stangers, other "races" people, today It was not the case a few years ago. And the consumer pracrices of today people as well in sexuality as on other grounds with short life unions seems promoting new criteria for mating. Even children are no more the bigger matter. Their future feelings are not taken in account. Plus the notion of group s fading out in most modern societies. The "racism" in mating is more the fact of societies stayed closer to ancient times, it can evolve, whatever we like or dislike. But the exotic side of the matter exists since a long time: but in older times a man found normal mating with a lot of women of other lands (for the most in colonies, and considered as touristic company pets) BUT not to marry them! Concerning morals it could make debate but...

 

[MOESAN]

Okay, but actually things are a little bit more complex. On one hand the D-binding protein (DBP) does indeed seem to store vitamin D for later use. On the other, this DBP may not be the only way the compound is preserved in our bodies.

All fat-soluble vitamins can be stored in the fatty tissues of your body if you get more than you need, unlike water-soluble vitamins, which wash out in urine. Excess vitamin D accumulates in the fat and liver, providing you with a vitamin D source to draw on if your stores run low.

Source: Does Vitamin D accumulate in Your System? (sfgate)

In some way we all agree here: different genomes (so different combinations of interactive genes) can react with different answers to metabolic needs or problems. In high latitude regions, the depigmentation response could have been the only one to carence risks for vitD FOR POPS WITH A CERTAIN DNA BACKGROUND, not for others with different backgrounds and "weapons". The mutation(s) prospered there and not elsewhere. But on another side, depigmentation could be a phenomenon not linked only to vitD needs but also to an other unkown pressure. It would be useful to know if chromsomes statistically exchange their segments by pure hazard or if some segments tend to stay unchanged more often than others.

 

[Tomenable]

Pleiotropy is defined as the production by a single gene of two or more apparently unrelated effects:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiotropy

Maybe pigmentation genes also produce other effects - and that's what was selected for or against?

 

[vcovaci]

In some way we all agree here: different genomes (so different combinations of interactive genes) can react with different answers to metabolic needs or problems. In high latitude regions, the depigmentation response could have been the only one to carence risks for vitD FOR POPS WITH A CERTAIN DNA BACKGROUND, not for others with different backgrounds and "weapons". The mutation(s) prospered there and not elsewhere. But on another side, depigmentation could be a phenomenon not linked only to vitD needs but also to an other unkown pressure. It would be useful to know if chromsomes statistically exchange their segments by pure hazard or if some segments tend to stay unchanged more often than others.

It's not only through certain favourable genetic mutations that organisms can adapt. Epigenetics (the switching of genes on and off under environmental pressure) could play a role in regulating pigmentation.

I've found this medical study, entitled Individuals with Exceptional Longevity Manifest a Delayed Association between Vitamin D Insufficiency and Cognitive Impairment, and it is quite interesting. Check it out:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4055513/

So this vitamin is indeed crucial to our health afterwards.

 

[Petros Houhoulis]

I was just musing and asking a question, Athiudisc. It wasn't an accusation of any kind. I obviously wasn't clear enough.

I just think "sexual selection" is a theory some researchers throw out when they don't really know the cause for a change of phenotype. These researchers also rarely define what they mean by it, and yes, I think there's a certain assumption that attractiveness is not relative, but rather that "European style fairness" has some sort of absolute worth. It's ironic in a time where people pride themselves on not believing in absolutes.

Why does it have to be "European"? How do you know that the "genes of beauty" that you allude to, developed first in Europe or Asia, for example?

As I've said before, I do think certain characteristics are rather hard-wired to be considered attractive because they signal health in both partners, perhaps strength in men, and fertility in women. So, thick, shiny hair, clear skin, lustrous eyes, a certain body type, a certain regularity of feature will be considered sexually attractive.

It doesn't seem to me that a certain hair and eye color and skin color are in that category. "Ethnic" groups tend, I think, to prize their own coloring. There are a lot of "fables" that show that like the Native American stories about how they were left in the oven the exact right amount of time, or from writings from the Greeks, for example, where they congratulate themselves that they're not as dark as the Ethiopians or as "fair" as the Scythians.

What did the Greeks congratulate again?

https://books.google.gr/books?id=9Z...ge&q=rome prostitutes red yellow hair&f=false

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phryne#Life

Phryne's real name was Mnēsarétē (Μνησαρέτη, "commemorating virtue"), but owing to her yellowish complexion she was called Phrýnē ("toad").^[1] This was a nickname frequently given to other courtesans and prostitutes as well.^[2]

Needless to say, the number of Scythian/Thracian hetairae in Ancient Greece is as much suspicious as the number of famous Athenians of northern origins...

The funny thing is watching the Romans prefer black hair until they realize that people could actually have blonde or red hair!

https://books.google.gr/books?id=In...Q6AEIJTAB#v=onepage&q=ovid red blonde&f=false

That does change if an elite group with a different phenotype takes control of an area, imo. Humans being humans, that "elite" phenotype will very shortly become the preferred, more sexually attractive one.

That correlates suspiciously with the general trend that whiter people tend to conquer darker people (Indo-Europeans -> Mediterraneans & Dravidians, Manchu -> Chinese, Mongols -> Chinese & Indians & Persians, Chinese -> Indo-Chinese, Europeans -> virtually everyone) and just doesn't quite work with the Muslims because the Muslim fashion trend is... hiding womens' faces, eh?

I guess this association of elite groups' phenotype with popularity surely explains why Finnish girls were the most popular slaves in the markets of Crimea eh? Not to mention the Ottoman slave raid in that obscure place called Iceland... By contrast the blacks of Africa made the most popular slaves for labor not only in the American continent, but among Muslims bordering East Africa too...

So, I would indeed think that males with the power to choose based on appearance might favor women with this "elite" phenotype. Men being men, however, they obviously spread their favors more widely, or that phenotype wouldn't spread downwards to the lower orders.

The second sentence makes far more sense than the first one. Men are biologically programmed to impregnate as many women as possible. Only civilization saves us from the horrors of masculinity on the loose.

Perhaps if the society was very patriarchal there weren't enough women with the right phenotypes for males who had more than one mate . Women never had any ability to choose on any basis, far less this one.

Women rarely care about the physical appearance of their husbands (their lovers being another story altogether). What they prize the most is resources, and they prefer a husband who shall provide them with enough provisions for themselves and their children. Thus they do choose, but upon an entirely different basis. Other factors include smell and other stuff, presumably because smell has some relation with the immune system. Looks appear to be somewhere in the bottom of the stack, except when women are in the menstrual cycle, but as I wrote, their lovers are another category altogether.

I guess you could say that within these parameters "sexual selection" may indeed have had some effect, although hardly to the degree that it used to be proposed. The other factors, such as latitude, diet, and migration have more effect, I think, but that's just my speculation.

Those factors you mention could apply more to survival rates than sexual selection. People with little capacity to store fat or others with little ability to remain agile in excessive sunlight would have a hard time to survive in certain climates respectively, irrespectively if were they were among someones' sexual preferences.

There's an interesting work of fiction by John Hersey called "White Lotus" which explores this idea in the context of a Chinese take over of the west. There's soon a large plastic surgery industry to give women "Asian" eyes and flatter noses.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1495461.White_Lotus

There is an interesting attempt to confuse works of fiction with facts here... I haven't seen many whites trying to look as black in post-colonial Africa.

That is because most black men are poor, plus most scammers are from Nigeria or other African countries pretending to be white.

Why do most black men tend to be poor? Who would be more dependent upon stacking provisions? A man in Africa surrounded by abundant game and fruit, or a man in Siberia who would think it hard to move out of his hut 3 out of 4 seasons in the pre-modern era?

There is a preference for fairer features in by and large C'mon. I was just watching this thing on Gypsies in Bulgaria where the young virgin girls go to marriage markets were guys from other families bid on them and they were saying that the women always try to make their features as fair as possible to get the better family to like them. This is just one example, but it's hard to doubt this for most of the world, especially poor nations. But this is a recent social conditioning from the dominance of the Anglo West. White has meant power, influence and security for centuries now.

The Gypsies' customs descend from the caste system applied to them by the IndoEuropeans in India, since they are, in all probability, descendants of Dalits, they might actually constitute the longest culturally oppressed group by whites!

An average, males in any populations darker (skin and hair) than women. Also adults in any population darker than children.
Fairness is clearly associated with femininity and infantilism, while the dark - with masculinity.

Perhaps the best explanation of why men prefer whiter women instinctively: They consider them to be younger, and thus more fertile!

Perhaps, European fairness is a product of male sexual selection. Although it is hard to believe, but how do we know the some Y haplo to make a lot of offspring from various women.

European - as well as otherwise - fairness is primarily a result of the "survival of the fittest" theory of Charles Darwin. Can't explain otherwise why latitude is closely correlated to pigmentation, irrespectively of race (white or yellow)

On the other hand, we know examples of female sexual selection on children's characteristics. Large cranial in comparison with the face of modern humans. In primates, it is a sign of infantile children, and far from masculinity.
View attachment 7824

Cranial cavity is somewhat related to intelligence. If women make a preference to wide cranials, then they prefer smarter children - which are evidently more prone to survival. Interesting idea!

I agree with LeBrok that this may just be another part of the puzzle, not that it invalidates other factors.

""Work in our lab has shown that darkly pigmented skin has far better function, including a better barrier to water loss, stronger cohesion, and better antimicrobial defense, and we began to ponder the possible evolutionary significance of that," said Peter Elias, MD, professor of dermatology. Elias co-authored the new paper, published in the June 21, 2016 online issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, with his wife and frequent research collaborator Mary L. Williams, MD, clinical professor of dermatology at UCSF.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-06-paper-current-gain-loss-heavy.html#jCp"

Yeah, black people have features which are valuable for the equator, but less so for other climate regions. Water loss does not seem to be a problem in Scandinavia, it would appear to be more of a blessing there, if anything! Better antimicrobial defense is equally irrelevant, when did you last read about something akin to ebola or zika in colder climates. Early Europeans were so filthy they barely bothered to wash at all! The Japanese thought of them as barbarians because of their filth, and Theophanu caused something of a scandal (to them) because she dared to use utensils and insist at bathing on a daily basis! Even today the barbarians insist at eating raw meat, something only comparable to the Japanese' consumption of raw fish. Hygiene is not part of the "white" genes or original "white" culture, because it was never essential.

I'm tempted to buy into this just based on my own experiences; it's not very scientific, I know.

Years ago I went to Caneel Bay in the Virgin Islands. It billed itself as a "natural" location. Beware of ads like that. Even in the off season you paid a fortune for a little bungalow that sat right on the beach: no tv, no phone, etc.

It was a natural location. Perhaps you misunderstood the meaning of the world "natural"... BTW which Virgin islands do you refer to, the British or the American? I've been to both, and I remember them to be great locations both.

You barely saw any other guests. We thought maybe there were lots of honeymooners, and, who knows, maybe some people hiding out!

If you ever found a group of people intentionally hiding during their vacation, it would be a world first. Although some fools do descend upon casinos and forget the time and day they are living...

When we went looking for some dance music at the main building, to discover they only had it on Saturdays, one of the waiters told us the resort was for the newly wed or the nearly dead. We were neither. First thing the brochure didn't tell us.

I assume by now that the waiter made his best effort to turn you off, making his life less complicated in the process. The nearly dead pay better after all, as everybody in the tourist industry knows...

Anyway, another thing they didn't have was spraying for bugs, although we knew that. I just didn't know what that might mean.

Yes, life was a bit harder before the internet. Nowadays you can find customer reviews for everything from tourist resorts to hookers...

We spent almost our whole first night on lounge chairs and blankets right on our own stretch of beach, practically in the water. Sounds idyllic, right? Well, when I woke up in the morning I had about a thousand bites from sand fleas on my legs.

I still can't figure out whether you were stupid or simply impervious to pain. Were you drunk that night? Most people do sense being bitten by insects...

By the next day they were infected. I had to take the resort motor launch to the main island to see a doctor, who gave me a massive shot of penicillin. (That's another thing we hadn't realized: no doctor on the whole island where we were staying.)

Stop right there ma'am, your hyper-nationalism is flashing red flags all over my brain by now: You refused to buy any protection for bugs, as if you expected to find some factory in the Virgin Islands producing anything, even bug sprays, now you complain because isolated islands don't have enough doctors, as if that is economically feasible. I take great offense of your disregard of small Mediterranean-style islands because of purely economic reasons!

He also bestowed the benefit of his vast experience on me: he told me it was always the people who looked like a bottle of milk who got bitten multiple times and then got an infection. The tropics were not for people like me. Now

that they also didn't put on the brochures!

No, they certainly didn't put it in the brochure, because they assumed you'd have read Charles' Darwin theory of the "survival of the fittest". Of course white people have less resistance to insect bites since their genetic urheimat is devoid of such little creatures! Alternatively, of course, you could assume that preference for fair skin extends beyond the human race after all. Whatever makes your day... Even if you the idea to return back to the vicinity of the polar bears where your ancestors came from is acceptable, if you think so!

In addition to the anti-microbial properties of dark skin, I think there is some truth to the fact that dark skinned people don't lose as much water. It's always the pink or dead white skinned types who wind up with sun stroke. It only gets worse the older you get too.

So, as I said, they may be onto something here.

Not something we wouldn't suspect by empirical evidence some thousand of years now...

Also, if this statistics are true, black women are even less popular. They are the most unpopular. This is not surprising, the black color far from of femininity and infantilism. But there are and other reasons in all these cases.

It turns out there are people on the internet who make a living by pointing out why black women are less popular, for all sorts of reasons...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOk3Dpv0MaU

I think this is quite true. This is even the case in Asia where men tend to prefer fair skinned women, if you take a look at the media in Asia, there are virtually no dark skinned women portrayed as a sex symbols, by contrast there is a few men who are tanned that are quite popular.

In less developed nations, the poor generally have to work outdoors (like a farm, for example) and therefore develop darker skin. The wealthy in these countries, work indoors at 'desk jobs' and do not develop 'dark' skin. Darker skin symbolizes being poor.

Conversely, in western countries a tan means that you have disposable income to take vacations into sunny climates or have free time away from a desk job to lay on the beach and get a tan. A tan symbolizes wealth.

This also explains the social phenomena in Asian countries like China and Japan where women carry umbrellas on sunny days. Similarly, in India, getting tanned makes someone less valuable for marriage.

To me, its not so much the skin color as it is the shape of the nose, the eyes, torso, etc (I'm keeping it PG) which determines physical attractiveness. I've seen my share of gorgeous and dark Iranian and Indian women.

In some cases, it just doesn't help at all...

Yes, there is also cultural and social aspects. And it certainly changed in centuries. In Russia 150 years ago, a big belly was considered a sign of wealth, as well as probably the "good genes", that can stock up fat in case of crop failure. Now, in the era of the grocery abundance, thick body is associated with unhealthy lifestyle and "bad genes".

Same in Greece at that timeframe. My jaw dropped when I read once that fat hookers were actually prized back then!

If fairer skin wastes less energy, does that mean that fairer people can potentially work harder? Is it what we see without leaving racial divides? Do fairer skinned Botswanans work harder than darker Congolese? Do Koreans work harder than Indonesians? Do Poles work harder than Greeks? Do North Italians work harder than South Italians? I am not asking if they are more intelligent or efficient or successful. Just if they seem to have more energy available for work.

Sent from my LG-D620 using Eupedia Forum mobile app

Ehhm, actually not. Whiter people would be quickly exhausted in warmer climates. Work itself doesn't necessarily make a people wealthier (or "nobody became rich by working" as the adage suggests). Whiter people tend to be wealthier because they are better organized as a society, or more civilized. Black people seem to have more endurance, and they tend to exercise harder either empirically or by making a casual connection between simple yet intensive sports champions' race. Hell, they even celebrate with more intensity than whites!

Totally agree.

The siesta served a very real purpose in the past. You couldn't do hard work outside for a good six months of the year during the hottest, sunniest parts of the day from 12 to 3. That was certainly the case in Liguria, which has a Mediterranean climate. Of course, the farmers had to make up for it by rising when it was still dark and then doing inside work far into the night. Still, while further inland they might be housebound for parts of the winter, in these places with a Mediterranean climate you could grow crops at least twice a year, so there wasn't much of an off season.

You can see the effect of climate on "northern European" descended people in parts of the U.S. like Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi etc., which are very "Anglo" states. They're stereotyped as being slow moving and slow talking, but there's a reason for it. In Florida for more than six months a year walking from your air conditioned condo to your air conditioned car can leave you exhausted and drenched in sweat. I don't know how people could bear it before those modern conveniences, much less work outdoors in it.

That's one of the reasons that they imported slaves from Africa to work in the sugar cane, cotton, and tobacco fields. They tried using indentured servants from Europe and Indians, but they died at an alarming rate. The African slaves didn't. They were not only acculturated to climates like that, but, if this study is correct, their phenotype made them more suited to it.

The Indians tended to be free spirited by culture and chose death from slavery, don't forget that they did cultivate several crops in Aztec and Inca territory, perhaps with as much intensity as blacks did. In any case they were dying in an alarming rate when exposed to "white" germs, so they were unfit anyway. Nevertheless, the indigenous people In Brazil even manufactured the soil they were using for agriculture! Whites died mostly due to tropical diseases in tropical climates.

Neanderthals, who ranged from Western Europe to Central Asia, probably had the same distribution of skin color as modern humans, including fair skin and freckles. Fair skin is an advantage at northern latitudes because it is more efficient at generating vitamin D from weak sunlight. Freckles are clusters of cells that overproduce melanin granules; they are triggered by exposure to sunlight and are most noticeable on pale skin. BNC2 is one of several skin color genes and it influences saturation of skin color and freckling. It is a Neanderthal gene and is found in Eurasian populations, most commonly in Europeans (70% have at least one copy of the Neanderthal version).

According to this ppl with light skin got that from neanderthal genomes, so I am thinking whether this has anything to do with preferences of mate selection...

Men would prefer any woman who wold be willing (or unwilling) to mate with them, at least in pre-historic societies. All that changed rapidly with the institution of marriage and other aspects of civilization.

It seems like European descent ppl tend to have a fondness for dark skin women, where as Asian ppl don't.

Not necessarily for their looks though. Black women can be prized for things white women wouldn't even think!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGBbln8SV8E

Yet, somehow, the whitey stepped on with their cultural appropriation tactics, and now twerking is a criminal offense when done by black women! Are they going to ban blacks from jazz and soul some day too?

Recent research suggests, people in China, Japan and other East Asian countries have about 20 percent more Neanderthal DNA than do Europeans. It is now scientifically irrefutable fact that the "human species" has been found to contain a substantial quantity of DNA (at least 20%) from other hominid populations not classified as Homo sapien; such as Neanderthal, Denisovan, African archaic, Homo erectus, and now possibly even "Hobbit" (Homo floresiensis).

If not given drugs to prevent infant death, the pregnant body of a rhesus negative mother will attack, try to reject, and even kill her own offspring if it is by a rhesus positive man.

The Domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) is a sub-species of the gray wolf (Canis lupus), and they produce hybrids.

There are numerous other examples of where two separate species (for example with different numbers of chromosomes) can also produce viable offspring, yet are considered separate species. That said, humanity has been shown to be, genetically speaking, a hybrid species that did not all share the same hunter-gatherer ancestry in Africa.This means humans are not all the same race, out of Africa theory is debunked!

Ehhm, that would be reasonable if it could be proven that all the other sub-species did not originate in Africa. The trouble with your reasoning is that you don't just miss a link, you miss entire sections of the chain...

View attachment 7828




1. African DNA found in Yorkshireman

In 2007 the Daily Mail ran a report on John Revis, a Yorkshireman who was so blond and blue-eyed when he was younger that he thought he was directly descended from Viking or Anglo-Saxon stock. However, when his DNA was analysed as part of a wider study linking the male Y-chromosome to northern surnames, he was found to be haplogroup A1.

John RevisA1 is very rare and highly specific to west Africa. John Revis shared this genetic match with 7 other northern Englishmen with the surname Revis. He had traced his direct paternal line back to the mid-1700s and found his ancestors where mostly bakers from the north of England; there was nothing in his family history to suggest recent African origins. However, his DNA presented the first genetic evidence of Africans living among ‘indigenous’ British people.Africans were first recorded as being present in northern England 1,800 years ago, when they formed a contingent of the Roman garrisons defending Hadrian’s Wall against raids by Scottish tribes. Much later in the 16th and 17th centuries the slave trade also brought an influx of Africans to the British Isles, and by the late 18th century there were around 10,000 black people living in Britain. Some former slaves rose quite high in society.

It is possible that John Revis descends directly from the north African clans that comprised a small part of the armies of Roman Britain from 43 – 410 AD, but the Roman occupation left only a tiny genetic footprint on the modern English population and it is thought more likely that the source of his African DNA is a slave from West Africa.

The contributor of the A1 chromosome to the Revis surname may not be its founder. He may have been a first-generation immigrant African, or a European-looking man carrying the A1 Y-chromosome introduced into England some time earlier. It could have been many generations earlier, with descendants of earlier lineages now extinct, or not yet tested.

Could ppl with African genes that look white find dark women more attractive than ppl who don't? I am thinking that the preferences might not be just cultural but it is embedded in your genes.

John Revis is just the proof that external human characteristics define a rather small part of human DNA, and nothing more. You haven't even established that he likes black chicks!

That is a generic statement. That can hold true for maybe central and Northern Europeans men but not so much in the south of Europe. Also seem to be the case the other way round.

It doesn't hold true even for central and northern Europeans. Racial mixing remains a rarity even after a significant number of migrants have landed in central and north Europe.

Minty, you might want to review some of the posts upthread which discussed which "traits" are probably "hard-wired" in terms of attractiveness, most having to do with pro-creation in one form or another. Skin color preferences, from what I can see, are not hard-wired; they are the product of cultural inculcation. It probably starts with whatever is the dominant phenotype of the elite in a certain culture, the association with wealth, status and power then plays a part in it.

In light of what evidence? Virtue signalling doesn't work anymore Angela.

The East Asian countries are far more homogeneous genetically than are Europeans. There are papers that show all East Asians are as related to each other as first cousins in Europe.

...And yet the East Asians are not plagued by recessive genetic diseases like their Pakistani next door neighbors... Did you actually find Nietzsches' "ubermensch" on the East Asians or is that a casual joke of yours? What about the Oceanians and Amerindians who are even more homogeneous than the East Asians???

So, European descent people start out with a much greater variety of phenotypes among them. We're more open to seeing different phenotypes as attractive.

Is this supposed to be an argument in favor of a cultural impact upon sexual preferences, or an argument of genetic impact upon sexual preferences? Because it certainly looks the latter if sexual preferences are depended upon phenotypes! How do you twist everything so much, honestly!

Added to that, we have experienced migration flows from other parts of the world. All of that leads to a greater open-mindedness about what phenotypes are "attractive". That doesn't mean that European descent people all or even as a majority think that "dark skinned" people are more attractive. There are a lot of men who prefer pale skinned blue eyed blondes. That's one reason so many women dye their hair. There's a big difference between those two statements.

If you tried to be a little bit more specific, you would rank right next to the legendary Martin van Buren, who was asked once "Senator, in what direction does the sun rise each morning to receive the reply "My good fellow, I have been told that the general idea is that the sun rises in the east, but since I do not rise until after sunrise I would not know the correct response". The names "north, south, east and west" conventional names and not scientific axioms after all, if the Australians decided tomorrow that they are on top of the world, and we are at the bottom, as they do with their maps, who would prevent them from proclaiming that the sun rises in the west and sets at the east after all???

Also, and I mean no offense here, East Asian countries were for a long time "closed off" from the rest of the world, and I think some of that mind set remains. There are those who think these countries are much more "racist" than the west, not only with regard to blacks, but also with regard to "Caucasian", although that may be changing. Look at how the children of GIs and East Asian women were treated after World War II.

Yes, they are more "closed off" and "more racist" indeed, or rather they have never been either involved in the trade of peoples of other races (at least extensively) or infected by some politically correct ideology. Besides, you'll never find something like that advertisement with a white man as an antagonist:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/ne...detergent-ad-turns-black-man-clean-asian.html

Each culture develops its own standards over time. While a male preference for young and therefore fertile women is probably universal, it sometimes seems to me that certain East Asian cultures sexualize very young looking women in ways that in the west would lean toward pedophilia.

It doesn't lean towards paedophilia, it is paedophilia, Mrs Van Buren! How much does it take to realize that South East Asia is the global center of prostitution, especially the underage type? Philippines in particular are swamped by cybersex with minors, and in many cases the toddlers are not harmed to the point of showing any aversion to the practice, but instead defend their relatives who put them in front of the cameras! If they are not getting traumatized, they shall make a case that cyber-pedophilia is not much different from Japanese underage sex cartoons, sooner or later, and your brain shall get a serious shock about it...

Likewise, Europe and predominantly European descent countries have developed over time a broader definition of what constitutes "beauty".
So, I know a lot of men who think J Lo is beautiful. I don't think that means they prefer it to any other look. Variety is the spice of life, as they say.

The fact remains, however, that even in the U.S. marriage between "whites" and "blacks", while increasing in the last decades, is still very much a minority occurrence, although a lot of the avoidance involves social factors like poverty, education, etc.

...And most importantly the possibility of the black man running away from his marital obligations, especially the raising of children. TJSotomayor might be blaming black women and black womens' frizzy hair for all the evils of this world, but I can't stop thinking that the African man could easily procreate while abandoning his child to the hands of his/her mother, while the Siberian man would most certainly receive the Darwin award if he even left his own child for a single day in the blizzard...

 

[Wanderlust]

Whiter people tend to be wealthier because they are better organized as a society, or more civilized.

lol If being "civilized" includes conquering, looting, pillaging, extorting, raping, slaughtering, enslaving and subjugating in a more "organized" way, then yes, that is why Whiter people are wealthier.

Not necessarily for their looks though. Black women can be prized for things white women wouldn't even think!

lol The same applies for White women, I'm afraid. "White" women, particularly Northern Europeans, are "prized" the world over for their purported "open" (read: loose) and "open-minded" (read: kinky) sexuality. In the Middle East, there are those who believe that White women are ripe for "fun" and "experimentation," but not fit to marry. And in the US, for example, there is this culturally pervasive perception amongst non-whites that white women have a proclivity towards fellatio and other acts that "respectable" Black, Latino and Asian women shy away from.

Virtue signalling doesn't work anymore Angela....

Are you one of those people who negate the effects of environment and socialization in favor of genes? I certainly hope not because both matter and both influence the other.

Having said that, it is no secret (or at least it shouldn't be to anyone with even a remote acquaintance with social/cultural anthropology), that all over the world, no matter the nationality, ethnicity or race, those who sit at the apex of power usually wield the most social and cultural influence--their likeness, norms, values, customs and traditions become idealized and aspirational, particularly to those seeking to integrate and advance in society. It is also no secret that socialization and enculturation begin as early as the nurse placing blue booties on the feet of baby boys and pink booties on baby girls while referring to them as he or she.

Pre-Western Imperialism and Colonialism, much of Asia, including the Far East (China, Japan, Korea) and the South East (India, Pakistan, etc...), already had a social/cultural affinity for lightness/whiteness because it was linked to labor/economic status--those who were poorer and worked out in the sun usually developed darker, "burnt" skin; those who were wealthy could afford to remain indoors, shielded from the sun. The later socio-cultural dominance by fair skinned Westerners factored "neatly" into their already deeply entrenched beliefs and views about skin color as it relates to the social hierarchy and "white/light" hegemony.

The fact of the matter is that lighter-skinned, "fairness" oriented, Asians, Europeans and their descendents have, at one point or another, achieved partial, significant and/or near complete (cultural-social-financial) dominance over every continent and people--should I run them all down for you? Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, the Americas and even Antarctica--Europeans have been the most successful in this regard. And even when European imperialism and colonialism came to an end, its social and cultural remnants were still felt to varying degrees in every land they had touched. Even if there was some innate human proclivity towards "fairness" to varying degrees (particularly as it relates to males seeking female mates), environment and socialization have most certainly played a crucial part in aggressively and passive-aggressively entrenching notions of white/light superiority and desirability.

Is this supposed to be an argument in favor of a cultural impact upon sexual preferences, or an argument of genetic impact upon sexual preferences?

Again, why can't it be both? And that doesn't even mean that they contribute equal influence.