EveesMummy - I'm 28. My father's family is part of a long global history of light skinned people marrying each other to pass and to help their children pass or at least have a light skinned advantage. And while you may like bleach, I was 4 when it was first put on me (and I went from almost black brown to platinum blonde) and the fact people are putting still on children to attain a lighter image both risks the health of the child and shows how damaging the ideal is to society.
I don't think it has anything to do with what our parents taught us - it's the the perspective in education, in media, in politics, in social research,
in all systems gives a White Western perspective as universal and there is a lot of resistance in all of those to changing it even when it's been shown over and over how untrue that is.
I mean, we have over 40 years of research showing that the colourblind idea is both untrue (children do see it and get messages about it from society and are affected by it from infancy) and contributes to the continuation of racism (if you can't see or discuss it directly, then how can it be challenged and if you remove racism then you result in blaming people for the results of the system) and yet this thread is full of that ideology. There is a big social barrier to dealing with it - and part of that people want to think of themselves as good and earned what they have and to acknowledge that society is designed currently to give some unearned benefits gives a lot of those that benefit distress.
An individual may not think it, but White people are more likely to be hired. More likely to get promoted, get a raise, more likely to be well evaluated by the public. Studies have shown that a White man with a criminal record is more employable than a Black man without one. White women make more than any other group of women and most groups of men. Dismissing that because we don't think it so it doesn't happen ignores that racism is an institutional power structure that surrounds us our entire lives to both normalize and excuse it away. One can pretend that it doesn't affect us or anything important but when the images, the stories, the "truths" are around us all the time it is part of our reality. And part of that message is that being and looking Whiter will mean more success, more safety, more prestige - and both confirmation bias of the images around us and statistics feed into that.
We can't compare skin bleaching and tanning. Tanning is now White classism - you can afford a holiday/time out in a mainly indoor economy - and it is advertised with ableistic 'healthy glow' which just isn't attached to other groups. No one tells even the lightest of my mestizo kin that they need a tan to look better. Even when I was severely anemic and quite pale for me, no one said I would look better with a tan and most medical professionals ignored it (because skin issues on darker skin is rarely taught). The pressure to tan has none of the moral, intellectual, financial, or safety pushes that skin bleaching has. We aren't told that you will look smarter, kinder, purer, get a job, or that you will be safer with a tan, these are all these that are attached to skin bleaching.