Curiously enough until the fairly recent past the different European nationalities regarded each other as "races"...the German race, the French race, the Polish race. In all probability there were enough markers of appearance and of course dress and carriage that they could tell each other apart at a glance. Using color for identity construction is widespread across the globe. India's caste system has status rankings closely tied to skin, with the "fairest" being the highest caste and the darkest skin the lowest. The same holds true in many areas of Asia, once again associating light colored skin with high status and dark colored skin with low status. We seem as humans to be driven to sort and discriminate each other.