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What a racist top illustration. 1) If you avg. the colors of all humans it is not the light shade that is shown 2) Seems to imply lighter skin shade = smarter

What a racist top illustration. 1) If you avg. the colors of all humans it is not the light shade that is shown 2) Seems to imply lighter skin shade = smarter (The article, however, is great)

VoodooJuJu 5y ago
It's comments like this that make me wonder if we can truly call ourselves smart.
- stonlyb 5y ago
  The comment you're replying to at least attempts to use actual logic statements.
  - slver 5y ago
    It doesn't seem that logical statements matter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27722154 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27722154 What matters is just grabbing some pitchforks and cancelling someone.
    - glial 5y ago
      Who is the comment trying to cancel?
      - can_count 5y ago
        Downvoting on Hacker News literally silences the posters. Not only are their comments hidden, they can't post more comments for some time (say in response to what people are replying to them). Downvotes are supposed to be a tool for filtering out spam, off-topic comments, links to malware and scams. They're used to cancel people for having an opinion that differs from the group. In this case apparently the group disagrees what the function of melanin is.
      - bequanna 5y ago
        Any positive depiction or representation that happens to feature a person with lighter skin. Ugh. These people actively look for “racism” in everything and scream for attention/approval from the woke mob when they think they’ve found it.
        glial 5y ago
        > cancelling someone > Any positive depiction That's not 'someone'.
stonlyb 5y ago
Upvoted this comment because it's hard to unsee the persistence of this kind of imaging. Worth noting the cognitive load darker skinned folks have to not internalize the subtle but clear message.
slver 5y ago
If you look for racism, you'll find it, even when it's not there. Skin color is a function of two things: 1. Amount of environmental sunlight (latitude). 2. Amount of circumstantial exposure to sunlight (lifestyle). If the assumption is that early humans have lived more outdoors than sitting in caves all day like the modern human does in practice, then yes they'll have darker skin overall. Is it racist to just state basic facts, or should we brainwash everything to be uniform and average across time and space?
- shmageggy 5y ago
  The "basic facts" are that the early humans the article refers to lived in Africa and probably looked very little like the final frame of that image.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  It is not so simple. Tasmania has a climate similar to Europe north of the Alps, but the locals were among the darkest people known. We do not really know how dark or light early hominids were.
  - Gibbon1 5y ago
    The essay I read on skin color says that dietary sources of vitamin D and folate plays a big role. As well as prehistoric population migrations. There are dietary sources of Vitamin D and it's produced via Sun exposure. Folate levels are reduced by sunlight exposure. And there are dietary sources. So the two are in conflict vis sun exposure. Because of the mild climate you can grow grains in northern Europe. That diet is low in Vitamin D and high in folatess. As a result Northern Europeans rapidly lost the ability to produce melanin over the last 5000 years. On the other hand there are no black skinned native Americans because the founding population had already lost some of the genes needed.
LudwigNagasena 5y ago
OR the author simply portrayed the average modern human as they experienced it. Averaging facial futures of all races is not something one can easily imagine, and I doubt it may even look good. Also, what a weird obsession with skin color as if that’s the only differential marker across human population, you know, not everyone participates in this crazy American self-hating hysteria that forces you to constantly think about colors of the skin and implied gender roles of people.

What a racist top illustration. 1) If you avg. the colors of all humans it is not the light shade that is shown 2) Seems to imply lighter skin shade = smarter (The article, however, is great)

VoodooJuJu 5y ago

It's comments like this that make me wonder if we can truly call ourselves smart.

stonlyb 5y ago
The comment you're replying to at least attempts to use actual logic statements.
- slver 5y ago
  It doesn't seem that logical statements matter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27722154 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27722154 What matters is just grabbing some pitchforks and cancelling someone.
  - glial 5y ago
    Who is the comment trying to cancel?
    - can_count 5y ago
      Downvoting on Hacker News literally silences the posters. Not only are their comments hidden, they can't post more comments for some time (say in response to what people are replying to them). Downvotes are supposed to be a tool for filtering out spam, off-topic comments, links to malware and scams. They're used to cancel people for having an opinion that differs from the group. In this case apparently the group disagrees what the function of melanin is.
    - bequanna 5y ago
      Any positive depiction or representation that happens to feature a person with lighter skin. Ugh. These people actively look for “racism” in everything and scream for attention/approval from the woke mob when they think they’ve found it.
      - glial 5y ago
        > cancelling someone > Any positive depiction That's not 'someone'.

stonlyb 5y ago

Upvoted this comment because it's hard to unsee the persistence of this kind of imaging. Worth noting the cognitive load darker skinned folks have to not internalize the subtle but clear message.

slver 5y ago

If you look for racism, you'll find it, even when it's not there. Skin color is a function of two things: 1. Amount of environmental sunlight (latitude). 2. Amount of circumstantial exposure to sunlight (lifestyle). If the assumption is that early humans have lived more outdoors than sitting in caves all day like the modern human does in practice, then yes they'll have darker skin overall. Is it racist to just state basic facts, or should we brainwash everything to be uniform and average across time and space?

shmageggy 5y ago
The "basic facts" are that the early humans the article refers to lived in Africa and probably looked very little like the final frame of that image.
inglor_cz 5y ago
It is not so simple. Tasmania has a climate similar to Europe north of the Alps, but the locals were among the darkest people known. We do not really know how dark or light early hominids were.
- Gibbon1 5y ago
  The essay I read on skin color says that dietary sources of vitamin D and folate plays a big role. As well as prehistoric population migrations. There are dietary sources of Vitamin D and it's produced via Sun exposure. Folate levels are reduced by sunlight exposure. And there are dietary sources. So the two are in conflict vis sun exposure. Because of the mild climate you can grow grains in northern Europe. That diet is low in Vitamin D and high in folatess. As a result Northern Europeans rapidly lost the ability to produce melanin over the last 5000 years. On the other hand there are no black skinned native Americans because the founding population had already lost some of the genes needed.

LudwigNagasena 5y ago

OR the author simply portrayed the average modern human as they experienced it. Averaging facial futures of all races is not something one can easily imagine, and I doubt it may even look good. Also, what a weird obsession with skin color as if that’s the only differential marker across human population, you know, not everyone participates in this crazy American self-hating hysteria that forces you to constantly think about colors of the skin and implied gender roles of people.