I wonder how common this is, that people on both ends of the spectrum purposefully gravitate toward the opposite end so as to produce children in the middle. :confused:

I know my parents did...my mom is very light and my father is very dark...All of us kids get darker as you go from oldest to youngest.

My father grew up during the Civil Rights era and "Black is beautiful" so I don't feel that I have a color complex. I love my brown-skinned self, and I love all the shades that we come in. I don't gravitate towards strictly light-skinned or dark-skinned men.

If people choose their mates based on that logic then they are idiots.

I remember this brown skin dude I knew who had finely textured hair and light eyes. Someone walked up to him, rubbed his hair and said "you're good for breeding." :rolleyes:

:eek: what did he say . .. was he totally offended or did he think that was a complement?

He thought it was a compliment, which is what a lot of unfortunate black people think. :rolleyes:

Wow . . that's why I asked . . I could see how some people might take that as a compliment and get their heads all gassed up . .that's sad. Breeding of all things . . . like he was some type of animal or something :(

This question is for everyone, if you could alter you complexion (lighter if you are a dark-skinned or vice versa) would you? I just finished a book called "The Diary of an Ugly Duckling" and in it a young woman who was tired of being, in her words, "fat,black,& ugly" enters a reality makeover show where they offer to lighten her skin (among other things) so she can resemble her other lighter family members. I just womder how many of you would be willing? When I was younger I might have answered yes to this, (elementary school was rough) but now I really like my almond chocolate and so do the men folk :D

I recently read that book myself. The ending was....interesting!

However, if I had to choose, I would be DARKER than my already chocolate self. I think blue black folks have beautiful skin color, especially when they have an even tone. Unfortunately, sometimes you get bright pink gums, very pink outer lips and rheumy yellow eyes on some very dark folks that make them look strange. However, I have seen many very pretty (by skin tone) black folks, my cousin being one.

Being extremely fair, I always wanted to be darker as a child. In fact, the darker, the better. Now I have matured enough to accept me for me and am comfortable in this beautiful pale skin of mine. Yeah, it still pisses me off when people think I am white, or Latina or mixed or whatever, but as long as it is healthy, clear, even and smooth I can't complain.

Sounds interesting. I always felt blessed to be medium toned. "I am the bag", I say. lol I would not want to be much lighter or much darker, so to answer your question: no. However, I would not mind being a brighter tan color or a darker bronze... basically, a slight variation of my own skin tone in either direction.

I posted somewhere (I can't find it) about how I used to want to be darker because I always thought that darker girls were prettier. I also wanted a jehri curl too. The bottom line was that I wanted to fit in somewhere. My mom is white and my dad is black and I was just somewhere in the middle. Now that I'm older, I am happy with who I am. I love my color, (except when MAC has those fierce darker skinned models who can wear the hayle out of the make-up I can only dream about) and I wouldn't change it.

Anyone who does not believe black is beautiful should consider a trip to Africa (or the nearest African community ;) ).

Africans have as much colour variations as African Americans. How would a trip to Africa be any different than, say..a trip to a populous African-American community?

Africans have much greater diversity and far more darker skinned varieties of people.

No, although I do enjoy my summer tans that make me a light golden, which matches my hair color and my eyes. :)

When I was young, I sometimes wanted to be a little darker. While a lot of people hold lighter skin on a pedastol, and that's annoying to me, the reverse is also true sometimes. A lot of people would make assumptions of me, such as I was a light skinned stuck up beyotch with long hair (that's more true now than it was when I was a child :p ), that I wasn't black enough, and I even had someone tell me God didn't keep me in the oven long enough. It would sometimes hurt my feelings but I tried to remember that this "reverse" is far less common than what black people with darker complexions and more dominant features have been going through for years. I also had to remind black folk who prejudged me that lighter skin may make many white folks more comfortable but it didn't keep some blacks from getting hosed down or attacked by dogs during the Civil Rights Movement--not to mention how Huey P. Newton was one of the "blackest" yellow bruthas I've ever known. :p

That's true and that depends on what part of Africa people visit.

Africans, outside of Northern Africa and some other parts where the people are of lighter shades, are assumed to be a less mixed group of people than are African Americans.