"Divided to the Vein"

You are from Tennessee too if i remember right?hehehe
You just may know me..I'm midsouth myself

I'm VERY white in RL, blonde-to-light brown hair, ruddy Irish burn-but-don't-tan complexion, and hazel/green eyes. In SL I have experimented with several different looks, but for some reason mostly have been a redhead. My skins have gotten gradually darker, and now I use a Lovespell Kumara skin from Cupcakes , which I think is intended to be used by an avatar who is from the subcontinent, but for some reason, it looks just dandy (they tell me) with red or black hair. I didn't choose this skin for any reason except that I like the way it looks.

Ok, how about a blond haired blue eyed Boer. They are just as "African" as any Zulu . Maybe it is best not to use the name of a continent to signify an ethnic group.

Blond blue-eyed Boers are just as African. And I suppose deep in my roots so am I considering my DNA has Baule geromes (?) as part of its make-up. You cant rile me up on this one.

Not trying to rile you up. Just trying to get a logical answer. After all, since skin tones of Africans range from pale white to dusky tan to blue black, can there be an "African" skin?

Over a billion of them, according to Wikipedia's 2009 population info.

Which I don't deny. But do we say that one skin shade identifies them all?

Me, I am light medium brown I suppose irl. In world I have always went with a darker "tanned" skin because the "black" skins out there were too dark for my rl complexion. Not to mention the make up.

I pretty much settled for the skin I wore for 3 years. Will and I are a bi-racial couple and atfter we first met irl, one of the things he always complimented me on was even skin tone, the glow and how soft it feels. When we returned inworld, he asked if I wanted to have a skin that was more like my rl skin tone and I said yes but those that I found I didn't care for. After a lot of "skin" soul searching with his assistance, I found a store that has the skins that are close to my rl complexion that I really like and serves as a reminder of times past and times to come.

Ancestry for me is easier to track by saying what I am not. I do not have any African, Aborigine, or Polynesian in me that I know of. That's it. Everything else on the planet is in there, and its all fairly balanced out with the largest chunks being Chinese and Peruvian Amazonian.

I'd say I'm a member of the rainbow race, but the GLBT movement has already claimed dibs on rainbows for some reason. So I guess you could just say I'm an Earthling.

I prefer darker tones on my avatars. But each avatar has one skin, period. Save for one 'jumble alt' that has my really odd AVs: the Beta fish, siren, harpy, and such.
- And I should say that Pussycat and Bunny both have a tiny form, in a shade that matches their normal form.

Am I reflecting my reality? At first I'd want to say a lot less so than all those white-girl AVs I see in the clubs. Sometimes that just baffles - SL looks a heck of a lot more Caucasian than the real world - which just seem to strongly counter the idea that its a global thing.

Many of my avatars couldn't be fit to any ethnic group. On the other hand I could easily say that -IS- my reality. Perhaps I feel more comfortable jumping through so many different avatars with such varied forms to them because I've been doing a version of that dance my whole life.


Egyptian is an ethnicity and not just a nationality btw: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptians
- Of course you could say it is a sub-ethnicity within the larger category of Middle-Eastern/North African.

They're Europeans.

They can claim whatever they want, but they're leftovers of an occupation. At best you could call them Euro-Africans. They aren't ethnic Africans.

European, Asian, African have become terms we use to denote skin and race. I dont think it "non PC" - It just a term that immediately crates a helpful image. From there details can be integrated into the overall picture.

Last week, in real, I had a bloke categorically deny I had any "black" blood in me (cos I had pointed that out to him after he had said something disparaging about those who were my antecedents). Skin colour is a very edgy topic and I think we are all answering this in a very mature way.

I "see" my real self very much as part jamaican and proudly so; but I am equally proud of my Spanish, Moroccan, French, Dutch and English bloodlines. I was brought up knowing I was mixed racially and culturally. I am as proud of my midlands "stock" of the UK and my Cadiz roots.

So its (as others have said better than me in this thread) always an education to see how I would have turned out if my skin had taken a right turn instead of a left. Either way, we are what we make of ourselves, spiritually as well as emotionally. I am glad I am who I am. I got a good deal when God handed out colours and shades and family.

They ar eas much African as I am "Jamaican" - my anscestors were taken to Jamaica from Africa at about the same time that they were in South Africa. Old hurts are repaired by embracing each other.

They have been in Africa for 400 years give or take. They were in South Africa before the blacks. They developed the culture of South Africa. Both the whites and the blacks slaughtered the Bushmen and the Hottentots who were the original people dwelling there.

Let's just make sure history doesnt repeat itself. We can look back, but it's best not to stare.
Let's learn. And let's even make SL just one fraction fo a part of being more accpeting of each other and ourselves.
Continental African history is fadcinating - and you are quite correct in what you have written, Chris.

According to some, if we don't know history, we are doomed to repeat it. I would pretty much say we are doomed to repeat it anyway. We keep making the same mistakes.

I'm a Euro-mutt, basically. Caucasian in color..

However, not a single avatar of mine has caucasian skin, or any other earthly ethnic coloration either.

Purple? yes
Light purple/pink? yup
Green? sure enough
Orange? up until recently, yes to that as well

I connect more with the personage than the coloration. (In both SL and RL to be honest) So, in answer, i feel most comfortable in whatever color fits the personality of the avatar.

Hooray for colored people!

Discord Design sells hairs and beards that's modify. Yay for modify! If you found a style you liked, you could go for a bit lighter color and then tint it until you had a close match.

I can't imagine skins that look like crap compared to slider skins... but it's your avatar! Dutch Touch has started on male skins, they haven't done any in cocoa yet but when they come you could take a look, just for fun.

It should be more skins that let you adjust color by sliders. That way you could tweak your appearance better. Nora Bodyskins (The shop that's closed... *cries*) had that feature. She had male skins too.

I don't see how skin colour matters much amongst all the other choices we have in SL, including the capacity to function perfectly as a cardboard box. It shouldn't matter in RL either but too many of us will insist that it does. Of course the fundamental difference is that we can't right-click and choose 'Wear' to change skin colour in RL - or any other feature of our appearance for that matter.

Then again, why should we?

As for the darker African skins being no great shakes in SL: I have seen some pretty good ones although I think that by and large the deficiencies of bad skin-texturing are easier to spot. A great deal of skill and patience is required to manage the richness of colour and tone of a believable African skin.

I'm actually a cross between a cat and a human in real life with black and white streaky fur, long black hair and a vampire complex. Wanting to be something completely different in SL, I choose a completely human form with messy brown hair and skin that looks vaguely northern Italian with hints of Japanese.

Since I switch skins and style often I can definitely agree. Most of the time for the past couple years I've been wearing a black skin and it is hard to find good skins of varying ethnicity, let alone finding good male skins. One thing I've noticed aside from all the african/black skins being on the darker side is that many are just recolors of caucasian skins and/or have a really odd unnatural reddish brown tone.

I used to be pale, but i find this darker color more appealing on me.

The deep tan syndrome. It would be good to see skins with a little more blue than red in them, which is closer to how people generally look the further south you go of the Equator.

Hardly.

First, there was no South Africa at that time. So, you must mean the region where South Africa now lies. (If you expect technical precision in speech by others you should practice it yourself.)

Second, a number of different African tribes lived in that region at various times both before and after the Boers immigrated.

I couldn't help chuckling at my own initial old fogy reaction, "Yep, that's the first thing I notice -- that nice skin tone."


.