

$200M market for a product catering to prejudice. If you had a similar product idea or implementation that could make you rich; would you still execute? - juwo
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7010885.stm

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nostrademons
Yeah, like deodorant, diamonds, Armani, the Model T, cruise ships, tanning
salons, makeup, corsets, diet pills, jumbo mortgages, health spas, and The
Great Vowel Shift of the 1600s.

Nearly everything is marketed by making you seem like a person of higher
social status. If people were comfortable with who they were, we wouldn't need
90% of the goods on the market (and the remaining 10% would likely be much
cheaper). It's not human nature to be content with your lot in life; if we
made everyone equal, they'd find some new dimension to elevate. Bring on the
Star-Bellied Sneetches!

~~~
jimbokun
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2uIJqqOlQw>

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jsmcgd
There is nothing more wrong about this product than tanning creams. The users
of this product aren't aspiring to be white people (which seems to be
implied). It's used for aesthetic reasons.

~~~
8en
I think there is a basic difference between a skin lightener and a tanning
product. A more apt analogy would be 'hair relaxers' that were popular in the
1960's and 70's, these products helped African Americans straighten their
hair. There is a pretty rich dialog about these products that I think would be
worth reading to get a better appreciation of the context and controversy
here.

I personally would not want to market a product that advanced an image of
beauty in a culture with documented history of racism and classicism against
people with dark skin. But that's just me.

~~~
byrneseyeview
It seems to me that as long as ethnicity correlates with appearance, and
beauty means a certain kind of appearance, then some ethnicities will be more
'beautiful'. Italian muralists painted pale fat women even though such women
were probably more common in Germany -- it was a standard of beauty that
happened to favor one ethnic group over the group that promulgated it.
Similarly, I don't think the people who decided that tan=attractive were part
of some vast Latino/Latina Attractiveness Conspiracy.

~~~
nostrademons
It correlates with socioeconomic status. During the middle ages, fat women
were considered attractive because it indicated that you had ample food
available, a sign of wealth. Now thin women are desirable because it shows you
have time to exercise, money for a gym membership, and don't eat at McDonalds.

Same goes for many other physical attributes. In much of Africa and Asia,
whiter skin is attractive because white foreigners have all the wealth and
power. In the U.S, tanned skin is attractive because it shows that you spend
all day on the beach, which means you're wealthy enough to live near the ocean
and leisured enough to spend time in the sun.

Humans seem biologically programmed to favor mates that are wealthy and
powerful. However, the specifics of "wealthy and powerful" aren't hardwired
in, so we take our cues from physical characteristics that appear correlated
with wealth and power. When I was a kid, the girls would make fun of all the
geeks. Now that geeks tend to be millionaires, they've reversed their tune.

~~~
ajju
>In much of Africa and Asia, whiter skin is attractive because white
>foreigners have all the wealth and power.

This is not true, at least not the way you think. Attraction to (bias for)
fair skin is a very very old tradition in India. If you look at Ramayana - one
of the two Hindu religious epics which is at least thousands of years old,
Sita, the main female character is described as fair many many times.

It has been argued that the fascination with fair skin came about because of
the Indo-Aryan migration (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_migration>)
though some people have argued that Aryans were indigenous to India as far
back as the Harappan civilization.
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Aryans>)

That many of the ruler classes (The Chitpavan Brahmins in Maharashtra
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitpavan> and the Moghul Nawabs) had fair skin
may also have contributed.

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chaostheory
This market is not really new... It seems a lot of E/SE Asians got cosmetic
eye lid surgery to look more Western

<http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/1101020805/story2.html>

To understand it better all you have to do is walk around in a big Japanese
city and look at the print ads (or hell just watch some of the commercials)...
it still perplexes me to this day

~~~
ajju
This is not the same. It does not come out of a fascination with westerners
and is a much older bias. See my other comments for an more detailed
explanation.

~~~
chaostheory
yeah you're right

I forgot about ancient Egypt where it was looked down upon if a woman was dark
(it looked as if she worked the fields during the day). It was alright for men
though (since they have to command slaves/troops day or night)

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brlewis
I would not be willing to spend years getting inside the heads of customers
whose mindset I oppose. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet
lose his soul?

~~~
byrneseyeview
I find it interesting that you're okay with opposing someone but not
understanding why they think the way they do. Isn't that a bad sign?

~~~
jimbokun
I'm not sure that racism is worthy of deep contemplation.

~~~
ajju
This is not exactly racism. It is a different kind of bias based on the same
physical feature but you will see it between members of the same family. So
for e.g. if there are two sisters in a family and one has darker skin, she is
very often subject to discrimination. So also with brothers though to a lesser
degree (so this is not entirely gender based).

In short this is bias, and it is horrible, but it is not racism. Interestingly
this bias does automatically RESULT in racism, so you would typically see
people of African origins depicted as goons in older Hindi movies. This has
changed slowly. I am quite sure the rising popularity of rap and Hollywood has
contributed to this change.

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foo2bar
Prejudice is just Bayesian reasoning. What's wrong with it?

~~~
brlewis
Bayesian treatment of email examines a large number of indicators (words) and
chooses the best ones to make decisions. It can be very reliable. Prejudice
works with a much smaller number of indicators (race, gender, etc.), most of
which are poor quality, resulting in a lot of wrong decisions.

Stereotypes are useful in books and movies, because they fool you into
thinking you have deep knowledge of a character you're barely acquainted with.
In real life this is not a good thing.

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byrneseyeview
This is hilarious. Here is a product that makes skin color literally skin deep
-- and you're complaining that it appeals to prejudice?

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axiom
I'm sorry to say, but it really seems like many people here are talking right
out of their ass.

For people who actually lived in India for an extended period of time:

1\. what is the driving force behind this market? is it purely aesthetics,
like tanning creams, or does race play into it?

2\. how large is the phenomenon? is it something common that many people think
about or just a fringe market?

3\. how is it viewed by the locals? are people who do this kind of thing
ashamed to admit it?

~~~
ajju
1) It is pure aesthetics, but the bias against darker skin, while not based on
race, is deep rooted and does result in people with darker skin being
discriminated against. It is not to the degree of dark skinned people not
being allowed in X places, but it is bad enough that a groom would very often
choose a fairer bride to a darker one.

2) It is very wide spread.

3) Not really. It has been around for thousands of years and has very little
to do with recently developed fascination for or admiration for Europeans.
Conceivably it could have it's roots in the "Aryan invasion" theory or a
another time thousands of years ago when the ruling class had fair skin, but
you will see references to "fair princesses" in mythological Hindu texts
thousands of years ago. It is important to note though that there are
references to "dark skinned beautiful women" also in some of these texts. So
the bias could have been regional inside India. I don't know of anyone who has
studied this extensively.

~~~
axiom
Thank you for your response.

One more question, is there a movement in India to counter this trend? kind of
like the civil-rights movement in the US 50 years ago?

Also, a related question, how prevalent is the caste system? are people
discriminated against based on their caste? I hear it's not a significant
factor anymore, but what's your experience been?

~~~
juwo
1) I hate to say it but often lower castes have dark skin and african
features. You will also find most of the brightest students in a University
are brahmins - the highest caste - just ask your friends their caste and
correlate with their intelligence. The caste system is racist. You cannot
change your caste. Period. You were born with it. It is interesting but sad.
Forced hereditary occupations lead to differences in appearance and even IQ
across thousands of years. Low castes clean toilets - high castes are priests
in temples (translation: the intellectual leaders today).

2) The caste system is very prevalent. It also leads to corruption similarly
as Rick Warren found tribalism was the cause of corruption in Africa.

3) How many white-black mixed marriages do you see in America? Not many. Most
kids up for adoption are biracial black-white. The prejudices remain over here
in the USA - at least in relationships. Read the chapter on preferences in
interracial dating in the book Freakonomics.

~~~
nailer
I think you've been modded down as noting the differences between races is
seen to be discriminating against them in the US.

There could be a number of factors that determine the difference between
university entrance scores for different racial groups. While those places are
free, lower caste groups may be too worried about feeding themselves, or
trying to protect themselves in rough environments, to worry about studying.
They could also be, in general, less genetically gifted.

Though unpopular, it is no more racist to state the second options than it is
to analyse the difference between African and European performance in athletic
sports. People once though that a more athletic society was responsible for
the generally better performance of Africans. these days most sports
physiologists will acknowledge that African people have a genetically higher
percentage of 'fast twitch' muscles.

Just because something is unpalatable does not mean it shouldn't be discussed.

~~~
ajju
No, he is modded down because he is making factually inaccurate statements
(which are also racist). Where is the data backing up his claim that the most
intelligent students in colleges across India come from the highest caste?

~~~
juwo
ask any student from India. (I was born and raised there). That is why there
is affirmative action for the lower castes.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=59891>

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alaskamiller
If you can be a pornstar and make some money, would you still execute?

If you can be a doctor that does abortion, would you still execute?
(Conversely, if you're a doctor that doesn't do abortions, would you still
execute?)

If you can own a tanning salon and make some money, would you still execute?

If you can make songs about selling drugs, pimping ho's, robbing people and
make money, would you still execute?

Everyone has their morality line drawn somewhere.

~~~
ajju
>If you can be a doctor that does abortion, would you still execute?
>(Conversely, if you're a doctor that doesn't do abortions, would you still
execute?)

I am quite sure all doctors are barred from executing anyone based just on "do
no harm" if not the law of the land :P

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DanielBMarkham
"catering to prejudice" brings to mind setting up sites for the KKK or
something. This is more like girls wanting to look like Britney, or kids
dancing like Michael Jackson, or yuppies competing for the best BMW, or
strippers getting boob-jobs. It's a social-fashion issue. Yes, perhaps there
is prejudice involved, but it sounds more like garden-variety fashion and
competition based on looks than deep-seated racism.

The better question to me is where do you draw the line. What's a business
model that you wouldn't execute? I draw the line at companies who do not treat
people in a way that they themselves would want to be treated and that causes
direct bodily harm. For example, if you've got a web site selling drugs to
kids over the internet, that's obviously not something you would want sold to
your kid.

