What if people really could change their coloring?

Question

I mean, snap, what if people could instantly change their pigment levels? Would that change the opinions we have about it? There is biologically only one race of homosapiens, so rasism is a misnomer. Our preoccupation with coloring as humans is like someone walking into a florists shop and refusing to buy any roses with red petals, or yellow petals, or whatever because it can't be the same kind of rose.
No kidding?! You mean there's a variety of roses to chose from? Imagine that.

(oops! I meant to type 'racism', not 'rasism' - which could be something entirely different, I'm not sure - snicker!)

Answer 1

Yes I would. I'd like to be slightly darker skinned...I just think it looks healthier and suits me better.

Answer 2

I think that would not make too much of a difference since race is not a matter of skin color, but also has ethnic, cultural and genetic associations. For example, there is absolutely no way an albino black person would be mistaken for a white person.

In fact, an ability such as you describe it would be exacerbating racism and intolerance rather than curbing it, since it is higlighting physical differences by making them more prominent in the public eye. Your initial intnention of making color seem trivial by making it readily adaptable might get lost in the real world. Even if it worked at a level, people would start focusing on other differences to judge others.

Plus I could see people feeling pressured to change their color like chamelions to socialize with different groups. Well, I think people sometimes need to realize that those groups are not that different after all. They are all part of some larger puzzle.

Unless this ability is used to self-tan instead of going to a tanning salon - then, that's a different story.

Answer 3

Then you would have people hating other people based on what their noses looked like, or what shape their left ear was. And if all our noses and ears looked the same, they would hate other people based on what kind of shadow puppets they like to make on the wall.

People like hating. It's in their nature to want to (since it kept our ancestors safe from marauding tribes). But we have to rise above it if we want to be called civilized.