1965: Ebony Magazine included an ad for "Dr. Fred Palmer's Skin Whitener". Available in soap or cream format, the  ad promised "a glamorous new you with a lighter, clearer skin". The ad also featured a handsome, darker skinned African American man intently gazing at a very attractive, much lighter skinned African American woman. The ad stressed "you will love your new look and he will too."

    Given the almost simultaneous publication of books like Black Power and Black Rage, the Ebony ad appeared in the middle of a serious cultural debate about African Americans ending the "self hate" produced by 400 years of white power. Activists demanded that all Americans  immediately replace the word Negro with the word black because Negro was a white word that accurately reflected white prejudice and segregation. Black, on the other hand, could and would reflect the sense of pride that activists so passionately sought.

    So, except for Senator Harry Reid -who apparently pals around with Rip Van Winkle- black replaced Negro around 1965 and ads for everything from skin bleaches to hair straitening creams became a terrible reflection of white control of black self esteem.

2010:. For $3.79 Dr. Fred Palmer's "skin whitener, tone and bleach cream" is available online. In fact, for anyone arguing that that we are moving toward a post racial America, consider our present level of cultural cruelty: Millions of darker skinned Americans still want lighter skin; but, in 2010, they are joined at the cream counter by millions of whites -many in their twenties- who want darker skins.

   Neither side knows where white stops and black begins so they experiment by embracing treatments that threaten their health. Cancer is one result of too much time under the lights at facilities like, believe it or not, "Jungle Tan". Presumably Tarzan appears and he, Jane and the children act as bathing beauty role models for perfect skin color.

    And for those who use lightening creams like "Body Cleaning Milk" -think Ivory soap- the skin does become fairer but in many cases so thin that a mere touch  bruises the face. In addition the capillaries became visible, those capillaries complimented  by stubborn acne. At the Fair and White site, you can actually buy "Black Soap", in a black wrapper as a "mild and effective cleansing bar designed to remove surface impurities without stripping skin of moisture."

       One Google estimate is that 30 million Americans frequent tanning salons; counting creams, it's a $12 billion market! And to my mind whites arguably win the insanity prize. They would never want to be black but they do want to be dark enough "to look healthy." So, as in 1965, white skin remains the color ideal but too white means you need a doctor so if you add a few shades of color, you can resemble President Obama, who is black. 

      I don't know if you get a color palette when you begin the tanning sessions but, after examining more than twenty sites across the country, the preferred target color is bronze. That's an interesting choice since, when asked or forced to make a skin color choice, many Mexican Americans select bronze.  Historically some of the most politically and culturally radical Mexican American websites titled themselves "The Bronze Pages". In short, despite the widespread prejudices against, and depreciation of Mexican ethnicity, many white Americans regard Mexican skin color as the ideal. Perhaps the salons should also offer "Spanish only" sessions for the whites who want to be bronze.

   Incidentally, at New Jersey's "Bella Bronze Tanning Studio" they offer this advice: "If you plan to tan in the nude or have areas of your skin which are typically unexposed to sunlight, we suggest covering previously unexposed areas for the majority of your tanning session for the first few visits. Gradually increase exposure to these areas, giving the skin time to build melanin production."

      Ultimately you could turn a white person into a black person and then, for those skin chefs with an all-inclusive, money making  flair, you could begin to sell formerly white people the expensive creams at the skin lightening sites that actually show "white" women as the ideal.

     Historically people condemned "passing". Now, with modern technology, a person could move -think of the ballplayer Sammy Sosa- from black into white and then back again. This would give new meaning to the notion that, in America, you can be whatever you want to be!

     Let's, please, be serious. The root cause of this cultural perniciousness is our continued willingness to define everyone on earth using one of three colors: White, black or nonwhite. The color scheme preceded the notion of race by hundreds of years. Race simply became, in the nineteenth century, the scientific imprimatur that certified, as one hundred percent pure, our willingness to embrace the notion that seeing is not believing. Thus, I, for example, am actually beige or light brown but called white until people hear my last name. With a name Fernandez, the doubts set in and then, I could be bronze if they see me as Mexican or white if they think my roots are in Spain.

    We can end this insanity. We can stop repeating the 1965 Ebony ads. And the easiest way to do that is to make everyday life impossible for those who wish to label anyone by the presumed color of their skin. Thus, if you ask me if I am white or bronze, I will tell you "no". I am polite and I try to be empathetic but I refuse to endorse a culture that makes skin color the axis of personal and cultural identity.

   We are 300 million people. Suppose that fifty million of us refused -just once a day- to countenance the culture. We moved other people to  think about the sanity of whites who want to be bronze and blacks who risk turning their skins, according to the Times, a shade of blue!

     Fifty million impossible interactions each and every day equals 350 million a week, 1.4 billion a month, and 16.8 billion a year. No guns. No violence. Just pure Dr. Martin Luther King. A forceful rebuke of a culture that teaches people to be painfully uncomfortable in their own skins.