I got a bunch of descriptions of people whose skin color was "olive" or "dark, nearly olive", or light olive, or some such thing. Now, I don't know about you, but all the olives I've seen were either black (which is a perfectly valid skin tone for humans) or this weird dark puce-green color (which isn't at all a healthy color for humans to be.) Oh yeah, some olives come with this weird alien brain washing device in the middle called a pimento but it's bright red or maybe orange-red. The only humans I've seen who are anywhere near this color had second degree sunburns.
So what does "olive" mean when applied to skin color? Some of the clarifications were "like Sarath", and "Greek or Italian". Um... For those of you who don't know Sarath, he's Indian, the eastern one. And he's nothing like an olive. For one thing, he doesn't sit too well in a martini. Maybe I'm uncultured or something but Greek or Italian doesn't say much to me about skin color either. I know a guy who says he's greek and he's, well, light-human colored.
Oh yeah, orientals were also described to me as "olive" at one point. I know an awful lot of oriental people... Their skin color was usually described to me as "yellow". Okay, maybe just a touch. But olives aren't yellow, are they? Someone cultured out there give me hand and let me know if olives are yellow.
Right, so where was I? Olives. Small salty condiments. Got it.
People are people-colored.