Skin matters and bleaching is a rational option for most Jamaicans. The lived experience is that 7.9 per cent (say 240,000) pale people are privileged or run things here. Don’t hug-up poverty; bleach and join them, as neither whites nor blacks chose their skin.

A Jamaican who bleaches is aspirational, but not every aspiring Jamaican bleaches. To get ahead some become minstrels, some marry up, get education, and some bleach; all legal.

Our black race ‘police’ say bleachers have low self-esteem or suffer post-slavery trauma — a racist lie! Using Occam’s Razor, what if bleachers just want to get ahead in life? Did this slavery thing skip six generations and return just as pharma invents creams so their people can bleach?

After Emancipation our 92.1 per cent (now 2,560,000) were generally proud, productive, self-reliant, and built free villages. What low self-esteem? Today, after 56 years of failure and a poor education, youth with no choice scam, sing, murder, and bleach to join the 7.9 per cent.

Standpipe community bleachers are self-assured and meekly park your car as you go to the US Embassy; it’s customer service, not their character. One said, “Mi nuh have nutten fi do wid slavery, as dem deh people ded long time!” God gave us skin; India potions to bleach it. Vybz Kartel, a convicted star, bleached his way to riches. Your degree works for you?

The black race police also cuss the 92.1 per cent for wearing wigs — also worn by our most erudite, fair, and trusted speaker of the House and judges. So how can wigs be wrong for dancehall divas and churchy Aunt Adina? Are we a schizophrenic nation? For centuries white people wore wigs to mask poor coiffure, scabies, ringworm, head lice, and to look good; blacks jus’ cum; get with it!

Then the epicentre of bleaching is India, since the light-skinned Aryans invaded, pushed the dark-skinned natives south, and a caste system was born. But Indians found ways around it, voilà, bleaching cream!

In pre-history, races with food surplus and good weapons had time to write, invent. India wrote Mahabharata, found the zero; China, The Art of War, made gunpowder; Europe, the Iliad, Odyssey, all some 800 years before Christ; Levantine folk illuminated astronomy and sacred MSS- Torah, Bible, Koran; back then Africa wrote and invented what? This is no put-down; we really don’t know. Egypt bleached, did black Africa?

Preference for light skin was born in advanced Eastern nations long before sub-Sahara Africa and Europe emerged from caves. China prizes light skin and avoids sun. It invented umbrellas and rice paddy workers wore hats so girls kept pale skin to marry up. For decades India pharma made bleach potions. Moms gave them as presents to kids — no shame no stigma. Why do our race police say West Indian slavery causes bleaching? Produce the evidence! India, China, Europe had slavery and any slave retentions made them strong. In the Levant, the Jew Joseph was sold into slavery to Egypt by his brothers. This happened to us too. Later he saved them, so now Jews run things. Our fates diverge as we hug-up ancestors’ slavery, not the future, and can’t save ourselves.

Africa exported slaves for millennia; trans-Sahara, trans-Indian Ocean, trans-Atlantic, and still does so. Do descendants of slaves in Arabia, southern Europe, Mediterranean, Bosphorus have self-esteem issues or bleach? No! A rich, coal-black, former client proudly told me that his family had been Emirati for a thousand years. What low self-esteem? Success cures many ills, failure creates more; get working, brother!

India has 4,000 years of science, philosophy, nuclear and space research and now leads in STEM globally, yet bleaching potions is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Clearly, mass bleaching does not hinder economic growth. They now face a firestorm as the Miss India beauty pageant is taking fire over the absence of dark-skinned beauties. They will survive. Bleach products are 61 per cent of India’s dermatological market (World Health Organization report 2011). What are our stats, Dr Christopher Tufton? What proof of a link to slavery?

Doctors who accuse the white man of screwing with our minds all went to study white psychology and medicine in America or Britain; why not at a campus of pre-colonial psychology in Africa? Did Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung know a black man? You trust them? Bleaching is a health issue; may be a human rights issue, but not a crime. Don’t allow Cabinet to run your life — what you drink, eat; dress too short, trousers too low; resist!

Bleaching products, alcohol, smoking (ganja, tobacco) are big risks, but why ban them? Place a health warning on them, eg: “This product may harm you or kill you!” If kids get good education they will make good personal choices. We can’t ban everything some don’t like. Stay conscious!

Franklin Johnston, D Phil (Oxon), is a strategist and project manager; Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (UK); and lectures in logistics and supply chain management at Mona School of Business and Management, The University of the West Indies. Send comments to the Observer or franklinjohnstontoo@gmail.com.