How dark is "dark"? My mother is very dark for a white woman ("olive" skin, black hair) but not dark in the grand scheme of dark. She's darker than my Latina/white/African-American friend, though, who is also olive-dark but not DARK. Golden? Even I look pretty dark when you park me next to my Scandinavian sister-in-law. Dark seems to be highly relative.

I went to college with a darker-than-some Jewish kid who had the tightly-curled hair mentioned above--we always sort of figured Jesus probably looked a lot like that. He was actually known on campus as the Kid Who Looked Like Jesus. No kidding.


FYI most Native Americans, even if they have very little white ancestry, are also considerably less red when they're not in the sun all the time. Actually, they look just like my mom (who is not Native American, at least that we can find. Go figure).