Thread: Does Skin Color Affect Attractiveness?

Now, I happen to agree that to me, light skin colors are more attractive, but that has more to do with me growing up around light skinned people and developing my attraction without dark skinned people to incorporate into my model of what is attractive, in the future I may have a different opinion, who knows.

However, many Hispanic looking people are attractive to me, which makes sense considering I grew up in an area where Hispanic people were around me more often than black people. I think it has more to do with what you are used to, and the places I have lived throughout my life usually have not had extremely dark skinned people, and it is because of this that I think my personal tastes lean toward a lighter skinned person.

I would not find it odd that, at least in the U.S., the norm might be to find lighter skinned people more attractive since the races are mixing and there are fewer and fewer very dark skinned black people for us to incorporate into our model of what we consider beautiful.

The man in this 9 or so month video puts it rather rudely, but it is what prompted me to make this thread.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3ZxrXiSY3Y
But what do you think?

1. Do you find lighter skinned people to be more attractive than the darkest of dark skinned people? Or do you find darker skinned people more attractive? Somewhere in between? Why do you think this is?
2. Do you think the majority of the people in your society currently share your opinion, or do they have a differing view?
3. Is it racist to not find darker skins equally attractive, or is there a better word for it than racism? In either case, why?

Do you think the answers to these questions might change based on the gender of the person in question? Would you consider it a cultural thing, or are there more complicated explanations?