"Why are Ghanaians so dark?"

So it's a hot afternoon and I am just lazing around on Google searching for things here and there when I realised that some people ask really weird questions about Ghanaians.

Google.com, the internet's largest and most trusted search engine, has an autocomplete feature which suggests search terms based on what people are searching for most.

The preceding is actually a very loose explanation of what the search engine does when it comes to autocomplete and any Google fanboy would have you know that.

I consider myself a Google fanboy, but today, I am wearing a different hat and won't go into much detail about that.

I typed "why are Ghanaians" into the search box in Google and got met with a rather weird autocomplete list of things people are wondering about when it comes to Ghanaians.

And just off the top of my mind, some of the questions are really dumb ones, but who's to blame them...they surely didn't know better.

So, in a new series of posts, I will be tackling each of these assumptions and try to answer these "why are Ghanaians..." questions.

And the first in these questions is "why are Ghanaians so dark".

First of all, not all Ghanaians are dark.

I have researched and, thankfully, there is no statistic on the number of light-skinned people in Ghana against their dark-skinned counterparts.

I can't even begin to fathom out the repercussions of trying to profile and count Ghanaians based on the shade of their skin.

But of the top of my head, I can say that there are probably just as many fair Ghanaians as there are dark Ghanaians living in the country.

However, the perception that Ghanaians are dark, or even so dark, is so widespread that I feel part of it might be rooted in the skewed colourism with which the world views Africans on the whole.

I came across a thread on TheStudentRoom.co.uk where someone had asked: "Do light skin black Somalis and Ghanaians exist?".

Seriously!!!

But it is not just among Westerners that this perception that Ghanaians are mainly dark people lives.

It is a common belief held by Nigerians and South Africans.

This becomes fodder for a Twitter fight and other social bickering where they try to "troll" Ghanaians for being "so dark".

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"Many Nigerians are surprised to see that Ghana has fair complexioned people. Their original notion is that they are all black-skinned, not just dark or brown. To see a fair complexioned person, a Nigerian will first suspect the person to hail from Nigeria. Many white people married black Ghanaians and their offsprings complexion is brighter. That is not the only reason, there are also naturally fair people here but a majority of Ghanaians are very dark", this from an article written by a Nigerian on "The 10 Things Nigerians Know About Ghanaians".

Is Becca bleaching? - Wochit

Most of the submissions in the aforementioned text are true, but it still proffers the idea that majority of Ghanaians are dark.

Whereas this might be true, major ethnic groups in Ghana like the Ewe, Fante, Ga, Gonja, Frafra are made up of mainly light-skinned people.

To wit, the question, "why are Ghanaians so dark" is even wrong from the onset. Not all Ghanaians are dark, and maybe even not "so dark" for the ones who are light-skinned.

Next week, I will tackle another one these questions on "why are Ghanaians",