Executives say "Rihanna is ‘hot’ because she’s ‘not too dark’"...

According to filed court allegations, Alan Kufeld, an executive at New York-based financial management firm Flynn Family Office called Rihanna hot because she's 'not too dark.' 
The suit states how said remark came to fruition during a debate about which Caribbean nationalities are most attractive according to skin tone. 

Kufeld and the company's chief operating officer Rick Flynn would also discuss the attractiveness of assistants remarking that one worker 'lost points in his eyes because she was too dark.' What's even more baffling is that this very firm counts Rihanna as one of its clients. Robert Solomon, who was once the company's marketing head, claimed he was fired for objecting to racist and sexist remarks and has since filed a lawsuit against the firm.
 
Mainstream media have always showed favoritism towards light-skinned black women over equally/more attractive women of a darker hue, so is this really surprising in 2015? Someone mentioned on radio some years ago that musically, we are living in a Beyoncé and Rihanna world. Do you think they would be as successful as they are today if they had the same skin tone as Lupita Nyong'o? This is the reality. Of course it doesn't make it right but it is what it is.