http://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2013/aug/14/indias-dark-obsession-fair-skin
This article is just a tip of the iceberg of the issue surrounding skin colour. And it isn't just a subcontinent thing either. I recently came across a Senegalese brother who confirmed that skin colour especially those that are of lighter tone are more favoured in their society. I also understand there is a strata where there are different categories depending on which shade you were I.e if you were 50:50 where mother was white and father was anglo saxon white being the top of the pecking order and so on and so forth.
With my family where all of our 6 siblings come from the same mother and father, we are all a different shade of brown, and even then their are prejudiced internally not to mention the external ones.
These prejudices stem from colonisation and the western kingdoms that brought this notion of white supremacy have a lot to answer for. Where the notion is you cannot be successful unless you are "fair".
This issues goes into all spheres of our lives from finding a suitable partner to finding employment. Yes livelihood is at stake. The obsession with whiteness even goes as far to the extent of putting filter colour categories on matrimonial sites ranging from "very fair", "wheatish" to "dark". This is not Dolly the Sheep cattle herding!
We must individually get to the route of our individual prejudices in this respect before we can enable our children and their children to have an outlook that is colour blind.
