As a non-white person in the U.S., I think a lot of people underestimate the impact it can have on an individual. Interracial relationships are largely accepted and lots of non-white women are considered beautiful. The thing that bothers me is there seems to be a hierarchy of beauty according to race. Beyonce, Zoe Saldana, Eva Mendes, Jennifer Lopez, Lucy Liu, are all considered beautiful women....but there are many white actresses that are considered more attractive than them. The standards for beauty are celebrities like Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Charlize Theron, Olivia Wilde, Anna Kournikova. It's really hard to make a definitive statement about beauty standards because everyone has preferences. Some people do find those non-white celebrities more attractive than the white ones I've mentioned. But as a society I think it's clear that there is a preference toward white celebrities. Something that isn't talked about as much is that those non-white celebrities do not represent what the majority of what non-white women look like. These celebrities have more European-like features than many average women of the same race. This is seen even more so when we take half white celebrities like Alicia Keys, Rashida Jones, Halle Berry, Jessica Alba, Maggie Q. If we take someone like Mindy Kahling or Rhianna who don't have as European-like features, their attractiveness has a lot more variance among the public- and these women are still huge celebrities that are considered above average in looks. (I tried to think of more non-white celebrities that don't look as European, and these two were all I could think of while I had to edit out some celebrities in the other groups cause I was listing too many). I use celebrities as an example here because we all know what they look like and these women are (basically) objectionably beautiful. If this happens with beautiful celebrities, think about how much worse it happens to the average non-white woman who's average looking to begin with. There's a European beauty standard in this country. The closer one is to it, the more attractive they're seen. The issue arises when some people's race/ethnicity automatically makes them very far from the European standard, and therefore less attractive. It's not a race issue, but it's an issue that is related to race. It's a very complicated issue because everyone has preferences and skin color does not determine facial features. But that also makes it hard to talk about because it's a perception or opinion.