They say that beauty is skin deep, but living in America, with all of the makeup, surgeries, weight-loss programs, and the inordinate amount of attention certain people take to their looks, this would seem to strongly suggest, that this isn't really true in actuality. So too, the darkness or lightness of one's skin, is actually base on one's amount of the pigment melanin displayed in each individual's skin, of which, this amount of melanin, even with children from the same biological parents, can vary quite considerably. It is this amount of melanin found in our skin, that determines for the most part, how light or how dark that we will be, though, the amount of time spent in the sun, without sunscreen or other protection, can through the UV rays of sunshine, darken one's complexion.
People are visual, so that in absence of any other factor to begin with, people have a natural affinity for wanting to identify or be with those that have the same sort of physical characteristics that they do, of which, one's skin color, is certainly something that is very obvious from the outset. Additionally, as much as America wants to believe that it is a fully integrated nation, it isn't really at all, as recent immigrants, for instance, have a strong tendency to congregate in the same section of town or residency as other immigrants of their type, not typically because of some inherent dislike of others, but for the comfort of being surrounded by people that come from like-minded circumstances, and are similar to them in culture, habits, and desires.
It would be one thing, if at the end of the day, we as a society, could honestly say in word and deed, that we treat all others the same as we treat ourselves, and we would know that this is true, if statistics, knowhow, and experience back those things up, but unfortunately, they do not. In actuality, we are often categorized by the boxing of people into arbitrary and simplistically defined different races, so that, statistics are built upon the construct that each of us, pre-identifies themselves with a particular designated race, even though, such a construct may or may not be relevant or even accurate to particular individuals or groups. This grouping of individuals into different boxes of color is, in itself, divisive, as rather than demonstrating in action that people and government agencies are colorblind, they quite obviously, instead, view color as absolutely salient.
In point of fact, once you begin to consistently categorize people on race, or religion, or national origin, or sex, and so on and so forth, unto this or that category or subcategory, you have made a fundamental error, which is to judge the merits of any person, on attributes that they are born with, or born into, which basically negates the most important thing, which is the character of that person. Further to the point, such judging is still often done, simply based on something as facile as skin color, as if one's skin color, or one's national origin, was a sentient human being, whereas the sentience of any man, is contained within the body, and specifically within the mind and spirit of that body, so that any agency or person that pre-categorizes someone based on something that starts with the construct of race or similar, has begun with a premise which is preordained to come to the conclusion that they so desire, rather than understanding that it is the character of the man, that makes the man, and it is the conditioning of such a man, that helps to buildup or tear down its character, so that social conditions that steal the humanity of any man or degrade such from birth, need be the the very first step to eradicate for lasting and meaningful change, which if given enough time to develop, will demonstrate that we actually are all one people, united, in these United States.