Rishab Aiyer Ghosh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > i joke about what happens to browns all the time. but i recognise that > the melanin-deficient (oops, sorry, the differently melaninated) may not > get away with that so easily.
I, at least, am clearly melanin deficient. If I wasn't, I'd get sunburned less often. Given the recent studies on how important Vitamin D is to preventing cancers, really what everyone would want is to have genetically engineered skin that produces lots of melanin within minutes of enough sun exposure to give you the needed amount of Vitamin D, and for the skin to rapidly break the melanin down within minutes after the UV levels drop so one can get Vitamin D later on. This would be much like a much more sophisticated form of automatically darkening sunglasses. Those who wear makeup might then need to adjust their shading preferences to account for the fact that they might change from pink to dark brown several times a day, but it would be a small price to pay for the elimination of the skin cancer vs. Vitamin D deficiency tradeoff. > you used the greek word for earth. i actually find the dutch practise of > differentiating between people who are "autochtoon" and "allochtoon" [1] > more offensive than differentiating between skin colours. i don't know > why... perhaps because a skin colour is innate and doesn't really relate > to your connection to a country, but allochthonous while no less factual > than "brown" seems to imply that you can never really be part of that > country. I merely used "autochthonous" because, in American English at least, it is so technical and unusual that it currently has no local connotations beyond "earliest inhabitants". Sadly, I know of no other word that is free from unpleasant connotations. (For me, saying "natives" brings to mind images of Cecil Rhodes in a pith helmet being carried on a sedan chair through the jungle by said "natives", perhaps with the procession periodically halting, and the "natives" then lying beside the sedan chair so Mr. Rhodes can walk on them rather than sullying his pristine boots.) Perry -- Perry E. Metzger [EMAIL PROTECTED]
