I'd say a few things. There's a lot of cultural baggage behind much of the evidence you point to, that isn't directly about beauty. Like prevalence of black models and actors and so on. For example, I don't think the rarity of black females as love interests in movies has much to do with perceptions of beauty. It's all that other shit - racial-ethnic identification, whatever. Same with men btw. If Bradley Cooper gets a big part and Taye Diggs doesn't, it's not because Diggs is less handsome. If there's a racial element in the decision at all, it's about just that, race, in all its dimensions. The studio thinks white audiences will respond better to a white actor. Troubling nonetheless, but it's not about beauty.

But as for beauty itself.. you have to remember the historical context we're living in, here in the globalized developed world. Who has led the wave of globalization? In whose image is the developing world being modeled? Basically, the culture of white American, Anglo-European folks is what has spread. Baseball is huge in Japan. Sumo is not huge in America. You can find Coca-Cola in pretty much every grocery store on the planet. Practically every movie theater on Earth plays Hollywood movies. This has influenced perceptions of beauty too. I lived in Korea for awhile, and I was surprised how much Koreans idealized caucasian women as the standard of beauty. It's to the point where Korean women get plastic surgery to thin their nose, round their eyes, etc, so as to look more European. It's fucking ridiculous. They've seen so many western movies and media images, and the whole culture supports this inferiority complex. They've been subjected to a subtle brainwashing. Their perceptions of beauty are skewed. Point is, their tastes are not anything you or me or they should be taking seriously.

Of course, similar things could be said in regard to black women in the west. To the degree they're seen as less beautiful, that's a function of the long-run dominance of Euro-centric values and tastes.

I'm happy to take seriously the judgment of experts, but they have to be experts, ya know? The cheese expert has to know their cheeses, and be as unbiased as possible. The beauty expert has to appreciate beauty in all its many forms, and not have some narrow ethnically biased notion of it.

I don't wanna get off on a rant here, but...

haha.