This is something I've been wondering for a while. If this ought to be somewhere else, I'm sorry.

Most of us should know about the thing with melanin and dark skin from science classes (unless your school teach a different curriculum or you just haven't got there yet). People living in places with lots of sun have genes for dark skin, if you go out in the sun too much you become darker, and if you never go out ever you become pale, etc etc etc.

Now here's my question: What happens if a genetically dark-skinned person (say an African or Indian) doesn't get sunlight for years. Can they turn pale-white? Or is there a "limit" to how pale they can get? I mean, I was under the impression that people who don't see sunlight ever can become paler than they originally were, but the examples I've seen are people who weren't very dark-skinned to begin with (Asians, Caucasians), so that's not really a fair sample.

Anyone knows? Anyone has ideas?

This is from what I remembered from bio class so there's probably a lot of errors in terminology and what not.

Homozygous Africans are genetically coded to be dark (ie produce a lot of pigment) to begin with so at a certain point, they won't get any lighter skin. It'll still be darker than white people though.

For example, look at the children of black and white parents. They are definitely paler than the black parent but are darker than the white. That's because they're getting a 'mixing' of the pigment genes hence why kids' skin color always appears to be in the middle of the parents.

Unless you have a genetic condition like Vitiligo where you skin pigment is being destroyed, an African person theoretically wouldn't be able to naturally get as light as a white person.

What KTC said.
You either have genes for pale or dark skin or in between. You can get paler and darker but not too pale or too dark

P.S- Indians are not BLACK

Agreed with theone & KTC.

And also: Indian aren't black. Only south Indians, and mind it, not SO black. .-.

Well, speaking from the POV of a person who's the child of a pale woman and a darker man, I'll say KTC is right. People have genetic similarities and differences and mixups. I get you mean to say that Indians are darker than most, and perhaps black is the word the more white people use, but I'll say that if a dark-skinned person stays inside, he won't get whiter. Of course, health and natural glow will be, say, decreased (maybe I'm wrong, since I'm only basing this on other theories, not experience) but I say that this is pretty much a repetition of KTC/theone... (*eyetwitch*)

Quote:
Okay? Did anyone say Indians are black?

Anyways, so darker people don't get washed-out white unless they turn into vampires? Gotcha. See, I was under the impression that people who lives in the basement and never goes out ever is super-pale, and they turn paler than the colour they were originally born with. That's why I was wondering how pale a genetically dark person can get.

Unless I got wrong/flawed/incomplete info and people do NOT actually turn THAT pale even if they never come in contact with the sun.

Vampire: It would depend on how rapid is the preservation of the body by the vampire curse/venom/whatever. A dead body's pigments would start to be decomposed by bacteria which is why dead bodies appear lighter than others. So a vampire could hypothetically be still as dark as they were if the preservation aspect starts immediately after they die. Though I guess if we go by a dracula process, they would be relatively light by the time the body revives (I believe it takes 3 days to become a dracula vampire so the process is slow which means the pigments can be decomposed by the bacteria until the curse kills them off). Though they should still be darker than their fellow white vampires since they have more pigments to go through.

I think a person's baseline color would either be the color they are born with or their color after puberty hits since that's when there's a bunch of hormonal changes and what not. By after puberty I mean when the body finishes its changes and there might be permanent changes in the baseline pigment amount.

LOL, I was kind of thinking AV vampires when I said vampires. After they feed properly, they turn paper-white regardless what colour their skin originally was, no?

Oh, well AV was never big on science explanations anyway so XD