ISSUES WITH SKIN COLOR

Now I don't know if anything like this has been posted before, but I'll post it anyways. I was just in the Fellas Forum and I noticed that this website has a great deal of posts about light skinned vs. dark skinned. I was just wondering what your thoughts are about this. Do you think this is a problem? We finally got white people(not all, but some) to except us for the color of our skin, but then black people want to go and split our race into light skinned, medium-brown skinned, and dark skinned, which is just bringing us back to square one. How can we expect other races to accept us if we can't even do it. I know a lot of dark-skinned females who will not try to date a guy if a light-skinned female likes the same guy. They feel like they can't compete. Now I am NOT blaming the brothas for anything, but the fact that most(not all) black men will only date light females does not help the situation. I also noticed that black people don't really start to seperate themselves into different shades of black until their teenage years, or at least by the time they start high school. I'm not saying this is a fact, but it's just what I have noticed in my 19 years of living. I never knew that I was considered brown-skinned or dark-skinned until I started high school. I've been to numerous elementary and middle schools and the issue of light-skinned vs. dark-skinned NEVER came up. Honestly, before I started high school, I never even notices that there were different shades of black people. But once I started high school, every light skinned person I met had to let it be known that they are light-skinned and I'm not. So my next question is, why do you think this issue gets bigger as we get older? I'm in college now, and my black friends always talk about how they only date light skinned men so their kids won't be dark. It's pretty sad listening to them. So do you all think that the battle of the light-skin vs. dark-skin will ever end? Will black people ever accept the fact that we are all African-Americans, and not light, medium brown, and dark? I hope so. I know that a lot of people will blame this problem on television, because most television shows have light-skinned actresses and maybe a dark-skinned side-kick (the UPN show 'One On One' for example), but do you think there are any other reasons? Now, I'm not trying to start any arguments, I just want to know what you all think about this issue. Thanks. PEACE!