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A while ago I came across this answer that introduced me to the obscure (at least for me) ISO 5218: a standard for representing human sexes (or is it genders? - thanks @Paul).

For a pet project I'm working on I need my database schema to store the skin color of a person, and I'm wondering if a similar standard exists. All my life I've heard people using terms such as "White", "Caucasian", "Black", "Blonde", "Brunette", "Afro", "Albino" and so on, but after some research in Wikipedia I've realized that everybody is wrong, because those words can all have different meanings:

The Wikipedia has the following about human races:

  • Caucasoid
  • Congoid
  • Capoid
  • Mongoloid
  • Australoid

Seriously, Mongoloid?! I don't know about the connotations of the English language but in my native language (Portuguese) that's a synonym for a person who suffers from the Down syndrome disorder...

This Wikipedia page also has some interesting additional information:

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840), one of the founders of what some call scientific racism theories, came up with the five color typology for humans: white people (the Caucasian or white race), more or less black people (the Ethiopian or black race), yellow people (the Mongolian or yellow race), cinnamon-brown or flame colored people (the American or red race) and brown people (the Malay or brown race).

The problem with using races (besides the horrific names chosen and scientific racism), is that they don't necessarily represent the skin color of a person... Take the following photo from Wikipedia:

Tanzanian albino child sitting with his family.

The most serious attempt I could find to classify skin color is the Von Luschan's chromatic scale:

Human Skin Color Distribution Von Luschan's chromatic scale

Most people however, are not aware of their von Luschan's scale (myself included). I also though of having the user visually specifying the color of their skin tone but that could lead to some problems due to the different color profiles used by the operating systems / monitors.

There is also a more general von Luschan's scale used to classify sun tanning risk:

  1. von Luschan 1-5 (very light).
  2. von Luschan 6-10 (light).
  3. von Luschan 11-15 (intermediate).
  4. von Luschan 16-21 ("Mediterranean").
  5. von Luschan 22-28 (dark or "brown").
  6. von Luschan 29-36 (very dark or "black").

Since this can become a very sensitive topic for some people I'm wondering what would be the best way to store this information in a normalized database. Is there a correct globally accepted standard to describe skin color without affecting susceptibilities while using straightforward terms and avoiding complicated and unfamiliar definitions such as von Luschan's scale?

Human Rainbow of Skin Colors

Similar standards exist for eye and hair color. How would you approach the skin tone terminology?

Glorfindel
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Alix Axel
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    "Afro", when talking about race, is normally a shorthand for "African-American" rather than the hairstyle. As an aside, it's hilarious when someone says "African-American" when talking about dark-skinned people in Africa. – Anon. Feb 03 '10 at 00:37
  • @Anon.: Yeah, that "afro" entry in the definr dictionary is really weird! – Alix Axel Feb 03 '10 at 00:53
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    It’s definitely not “genres”. It might be “genders”. – Paul D. Waite Feb 03 '10 at 14:00
  • “ it's hilarious when someone says "African-American" when talking about dark-skinned people in Africa”. Totally. They should be saying “African-African.” – Paul D. Waite Feb 03 '10 at 14:03
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    This is a fascinating question, and a potential minefield. Good luck. – Neil Aitken Feb 03 '10 at 14:03
  • If you read the History section on the wiki article on Down syndrome disorder you will realise that the Portuguese are still using rascist tones from many years ago. Time to move on! – TFD Feb 03 '10 at 21:27
  • In the United States, I've never heard afro refer to anything other than the hairdo. It would probably be considered politically incorrect to use it as shorthand for African American. – Greg Feb 03 '10 at 22:01
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    Actually, "African-American" is incorrect, it should be "Afro-American"... At least if you want to speak English correctly. I guess the "Politically Correct" term is the "Grammatically Incorrect" term as well, though, right? – Trevoke Feb 10 '10 at 14:27
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    My skin tone varies considerably with conditions, even if you assume I am at rest and relaxed. In the summer, it might be a considerably different shade than in the winter, for an obvious example; you would need to specify that you want a non-sun-exposed part of the body to be used. Also, I assume you don't want the colour of the birth mark that takes up about a full quarter of my back, but rather the colour that represents the majority of my skin... no doubt other issues abound. Great question, though; +1. – whybird Feb 12 '10 at 01:02
  • @whybird: That's a good point. – Alix Axel Feb 12 '10 at 09:38
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    Mongoloid became a derogatory term for Down Syndrome sufferers because their eyes appeared to look like a Mongolians. – Catharsis Feb 13 '10 at 01:33
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    +1..for an amzing description. i think the question has provided more information then an answer can ever provide. – Suraj Chandran Feb 15 '10 at 04:57
  • I would like to find a picture like that with more people, more extreme skin tones, from Albino or impale white to Jarawa. – skan Nov 11 '13 at 02:05

6 Answers6

7

olayforyou.com defines these skin tones

alt text http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/151ab0ddd7.jpg

  • very fair
  • fair
  • olive
  • dark
  • very dark

Any person using cosmetics regularly would understand these terms. These rest of us are just guessing :-)

Alix Axel
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TFD
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    Honestly, I can't figure out if my skin tone is "very fair", "fair" or "olive". – Alix Axel Feb 03 '10 at 02:39
  • As I said "the rest of us are just guessing" :-) ... Compare you skin colour in sunlight to the colour swatches on your monitor in the shade – TFD Feb 03 '10 at 03:47
  • Besides "A" being a load of crap the colour tones in Homo Sapien skin cosmetics would probably turn Na'vi skin green. So I can't imagine Olay doing much marketing there. Thanks for the edit Alix :-) – TFD Feb 09 '10 at 06:54
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    Olive? Who on earth has an olive skin? Heck, even the hulk has a green skin, not olive. – Leo Jweda Feb 14 '10 at 07:53
  • @Laith J: Cristiano Ronaldo and Gisele Bündchen according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_skin. – Alix Axel Feb 15 '10 at 11:47
  • Why don't people get my jokes? :( – Leo Jweda Feb 15 '10 at 12:37
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I'd do something like the Nintendo Wii's Mii Editor and just show several swatches of colors. Even if the monitor isn't calibrated, if someone sees them all on the screen at once they should be able to make the correct choice.

alt text

You can then give the color an internal name and do your data mining on that.

Glorfindel
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Greg
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I personally wouldn't define a domain; let that be a textbox and everybody fills anything he/she wants. I prefer this way just because can be a polemic and potentially offensive subject, like this.

EDIT: Or, what about doesn't display any names, but colors instead? Use that Von Luschan's scale and use a "Select your color: " label. You don't need to name it and can to define a domain into your database.

Rubens Farias
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  • The problem is I need this info to be searchable so normalization is a must. And I'm also thinking of doing some data-mining with it in the future. Funny link though! :P – Alix Axel Feb 03 '10 at 00:47
  • I mentioned that in my question, there are some possible problems with that approach. – Alix Axel Feb 03 '10 at 00:51
  • Sorry @Alix, I'm sleepy; about monitor calibration, well, that's as precise as any other scale you propose. All that have a big subjective interpretation. – Rubens Farias Feb 03 '10 at 01:15
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You may wish to consider skin tones defined by cosmetic companies as these can be quite exact and even refer to tanning effects.

Fionnuala
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2

Despite monitor calibration issues, I think that the von Luschan chromatic scale along with the numbers and textual descriptions you have shown, is the best. Sure it's a bit subjective, but so are all the alternatives.

Seeing the entire available range of selections, and visualizing very light and dark people, it's not to hard to come up with an estimate of where you lie on the scale.

Plus, the combination of numbers, colors, and words makes it easier to hone in on your approximate color.

EDIT:

I do see that you have expressed doubts about using the chromatic scale in your post - I just thought you might consider these points. People don't have to be familiar with the scale ahead of time to use it. I've never seen it before but it makes perfect sense to me.

Andy West
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One skin tone scale which the most people have come in contact with is the simplified Fitzpatrick scale used for emoji skin tone selectors in Unicode:

Considering Unicode is globally accepted as a text-encoding standard, it could be argued that using one of these characters to represent and encode a skin tone is the least controversial.

IS4
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