Black skin, white skin, Asian skin – what’s the difference?
last updated on 14 November 2011
Surprisingly (or not), it’s more than just skin color that separates a black person from a white person, and a white person from an Asian.
Scientists have discovered structural differences between black, white and Asian skin in terms of its:
- thickness
- water content
- lipids (fat and fat soluble vitamins)
Differences between black skin and white skin
- The epidermis of black skin contains less glutathione than white skin. (Reduced glutathione may be responsible for skin color. Inhibition of epidermal glutathione system leads to darker skin, and glutathione in the epidermis has been shown to inhibit melanogenesis.)
- In the epidermis of white skin, hyperpigmentation or tanning is always followed by a drop in glutathione reductase and reduced glutathione.
- Black skin have larger melanosomes than white skin.
- Black skin has a higher electrical resistance than white skin, which suggests greater cohesion and thickness.
- Black skin has more and larger fibroblasts than white skin. The fibroblasts in black skin are also more multi-nucleated. This can lead to more abnormal scarring and keloid formation.
- Black skin also has larger mast cell granules than white skin, which may also play a part in keloid formation.
- The stratum corneum of black skin has more layers and stronger cells than in white skin.
- Black skin and Asian skin have thicker and more compact dermis than white skin. This is also why blacks and Asians have fewer facial wrinkles than whites.
- Black skin has more casual lipids and more moisture in the stratum corneum than white skin.
- Black skin sheds its outer layers more (increased desquamation) than white skin
- Black skin has 50% lower ceramides than white or Hispanic skin. Asians have the highest skin ceramide levels.
- Black and Indian skin has two times more alkali-insoluble melanin (darker DHI-enriched eumelanin) than white skin, hispanic skin and Chinese skin.
- Black skin has a lower pH than white skin.
What does this mean?
The differences between our skin can determine several things.
- Effectiveness of topical skin lightening creams and lotions
- Safety of chemical peels and skin laser treatments
- Our skin’s healing response to wounds and the formation of abnormal scars
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Try to use hydroquinone and mercury free skin-lightening products. Whitening skin care has been a cosmetic concern for thousands of years, all around the world. From all races in Asia, the Caribbean, India to Europe and even with the Caucasian race.
hello how black skin can be converted in white skin
Woman / man, be proud that ur black!
Be proud of whatever race u r!
Weather ur asian or black or white or blue or orange or even purple!
BE PROUD OF WHO U R!!!
Well said Cow! As a white guy I can say I would take a black girl over a tall skinny white blonde any day! Not that I have a problem with blonde girls but our stupid American society that will only hire white blonde girls for a spokes woman or a restaurant hostess. Black girls are beautiful and are very under appreciated in American society. Blacks look better with black hair and not as much when they dye it blonde so quit trying to conform to this barbie doll American image because yall are much better than that!
i don’t know whether i understood what you said but i am a black of fair complexion, i don’t scar easily, like i get a deep cut, within hours the flesh is back together, after two days, it’s all healed with no medication and you will never find any kind of scarring….that fact about blacks scarring easily…not so true!!
wish you could write a more elaborate conclusion.
actually sonia it varies and if i get one scratch it will heal very quickly about a week depending on how deep the cut is….and after the scaling falls off it either gets darker than the skin sourounding it or significantly light than the skin around it..although the dark scars dont go away it takes two years for the lighter to turn some what closer to what it was originally but still you can see where the scar is meaning it never disapeared completely …but its different for the face i have had many deep cuts from falling over or hitting something and those cuts never left scars they just disapeared because i used turmeric powed right when i cut it that really helps the scarring to never occur…magic all you have to do if you ever get a cut on your face is rinse the blood off and the germs with water and make a turmeric paste and apply it..there will be scaling for a couple of days and when it falls off it will be slightly lighter ofcourse new skin..after that your new skin will look exactly like your normal complexion and after that it will be hard to find exactly where the scar was…
“Black skin has more and larger fibroblasts than white skin. The fibroblasts in black skin are also more multi-nucleated. This can lead to more abnormal scarring and keloid formation.”
sonia, you said you are black but with a fair complexion. i can only guess that you are saying that you have light skin. this means down the line you are mixed. your scars would heal better than, lets just say, the guy in the pic at the top of the page. also, scars depend on which direction and how deep the cuts are.
I want to bleach my skin as white as I can. Why not, we were all white when we were born anyways.
Girl! You got it so backwards! First of all, have you ever seen a white person have a black child without mixing races? No, but you have seen the opposite, think of albino. The first people were black. I believe that when God cursed Adam and Eve it was by taking the color from their children, to make them suffer. And anyone knows that when your children do not look like you, you are naturally upset.
Food for thought. Cain may have been Albino . . .
Now I am not saying that Albinoism is a curse it itself but that it was used to get Adam and Eve’s attention.
hahahahahaahahahahahahahha
Your comment is full of wrongs:
No, there is no one who have seen a black person have a white child, albino is not the same as white.
You also think the first humans were black, well, it’s impossible to know if the first humans where black or lighter brown, they were most likely not very white (because they lived in Africa). It depends in what stage of evolution you start to count our ancestors as humans. Chimps are white under they’re hairs you know. We can’t know if our ancestors developed black skin before they lost they’re hairs.
You’re saying taking the colour FROM their children. For your information, white is all colours mixed and black is no colour (0 light = 0 colour). The correct thing to say would be to give them colour. You are also saying that he did that to make them suffer and as a curse. So you’re saying white people are a curse for humanity. I just can’t see that being true.
I’m so sorry, but Whites ARE a blight on the face of the earth. Aside from the wars started among Africans because of imposed British/European idealism during the British occupancy of Africa, when was the last time blacks or anyone else (with the exception of Genghis Khan) tried to take over the world – genocide, nuclear war, hate propaganda, slavery (even among their own kind), such of the like?
The only reason blacks never tried to take over the world is because they never had the capability. There were plenty of African empires inside Africa though. Oh, and they used other blacks as slaves as well. Don’t be so racist. It’s an animal thing to expand and kill their enemies. The higher capability, the more they expand and kill.
Haha, i hope that guy is joking about skin bleaching. Intresting article. I knew black peoples skin was thicker than white peoples. My girlfrend rolled her eyes at me when i said somthind about that related to wrink
Es or somthing or other. Haha. (im white, shes black).
When people say “White” they normally refer it to a “Caucasian” person. When someone wants to do whitening, or wants white skin. This doesn’t mean they want to be white. Actually, correctly speaking East Asians tend to actually literally be closer to the color white-skin then actualy white people. (Who have the tendency to have spots, red-faced, freckles, hair, pink undertone, thin-skin sometimes blue and purple from seeing veins through their skin) since asians have a variety of skin color (olive-tone, tan for south east asians, and others have yellowtone especially when they’ve been in the sun and all it “discoloration”) because they have more malin in their skin. Yet a lot of them are “one-toned” since they have thicker skin and VERY pale and a lot of my japanese friends have literally white skin naturally. When a person wants to whiten/brighten their skin is it is to make their skin eventoned, correct discoloration and to fix spots then may have had from the sun.
Firstly,i would like to say that your mind is to narrow and very shallow to know what colour adam was.and secondly,only uneducated people,make irrelevant comments like that.
What is wrong with everyone read a little people I am black my parents are black from Puerto Rico and Barbados and I am still black. Whether white, asian, or ” Hispanic” I placed Hispanic in quotes because Hispanics are a collective fusion of African,indiginous, and of course descendants of their Spaniard captures. In the end scientist oh let me add white and black have finally revealed that we all are one people. We are all black, descendants of the fist humans found in Africa. We traveled the globe and due to climate and other variables in nature our features changed as an adaptation. So I believe tha our skin would be different due to our variation of climates. Oh and as for Adam and eve god dimake us in his image, and took us from the ground and breathed life into us. Just as we come in shades the brown shades of the earth’s soil come in a variety of shades.
Please, what is your resources ?
Could you write it please
Can I share this info. with my classmates ? (1st Dental student)
White women have better everythang,,,, skin too now dat its mentioned,,,
if we black men could pick,, we pick dem pretty white girls over our own,, sad butt true. Just look at brothers with white goddess, we treat the white princess much better,
ya boy out!
Blacks girls disgust the hell out of me and I’m a black male. I saint the only brother that feels this way. Most of all the good looking brothers like myself chasing white girls first then blacks second.
It aint just the skin, black girls got them bad attitudes, aint got pretty hair, n big nose
Well it’s natural that people avoid what they can’t handle, but to accuse all black women of having bad attitude is ignorant. You are not a brother, only an ignorant man. Your comments on noses and who good looking brothers is funny indeed. I’m one of those brothers, and only an ignorant woman would get with a shallow man, regardless of what his skin choice is.
….And remember a lot of women of other races want black men because they have a fetish for the skin tone, and it has nothing to do with who you are either….I guess shallowness attracts shallowness. I have love for all races and don’t have a shallow mind…That’s probably why my relationship is working. Hope it helps knock some sense into your low self-esteem.