Dark-skinned people

“ One of the most remarkable forms which this belief assumes is when dark-skinned races, wanting some reasonable theory to account for the appearance among them of human creatures of a new strange sort, the white men, and struck with their pallid deathly hue combined with powers that seem those of superhuman spiritual beings, have determined that the manes of their dead must have come back in this wondrous shape. ”

“ I never knew of any distinction on account of the color of the flesh of a human being. Indeed, when I think of what the colored people have been made to suffer at the hands of their supposedly superior race, every time I look a colored brother in the face I blush for the crimes that my race has committed against his race. ”

“ The color of the skin, that important mark of race, may be best understood by looking at the darkest variety. The dark hue of the negro does not lie so deep as the innermost or true skin, which is substantially alike among all races of mankind. The negro, in spite of his name, is not black, but deep brown, and even this darkest hue does not appear at the beginning of life, for the new-born negro child is reddish-brown, soon becoming slaty-gray, and then darkening. Nor does the darkest tint ever extend over the negro's whole body, but his soles and palms are brown. ”

“ To be sure, there is a fear that we may all turn into blackamoors, but that is nothing when a man gets accustomed to it. I don’t see why a dark skin should not be as good as a white one. Though they don’t all talk the same lingo, they’ve as much sense in their woolly heads as white men, that’s my opinion ”

“ They 567 fear that should they lose the power of might and brute force, and equal opportunities are gained by the dark people, that they will be dethroned and surpassed. For this reason they warn of the unfitness and undesirability of their darker brothers. ”

“ All else was blackness around her, impenetrable blackness, almost tangible in its intensity, and out of the blackness which seemed like that of a dungeon there came cries as of human creatures in hell. ”

“ Nor is Blackness inconsistent with Beauty, which even to our European Eyes consists not so much in Colour, as an Advantageous Stature, a Comely Symmetry of the parts of the Body, and Good Features in the Face. So that I see not why Blackness should be thought such a Curse to the Negroes, unless perhaps it be, that being wont to go Naked in those Hot Climates, the Colour of their Skin does probably, according to the Doctrine above deliver'd, make the Sun-beams more Scorching to them, than they would prove to a people of a White Complexion. ”

“ Perhaps you are not aware that among the white race the finest grained skins generally belong to persons of dark complexion. This, as a characteristic of the black race, I think might be accepted as some compensation for the coarse woolly hair. ”

“ On the whole, it seems that the distinction of color, from the fairest Englishman to the darkest African, has no hard and fast lines, but varies gradually from one tint to another.
The natural hue of skin farthest from that of the negro is the complexion of the fair race of Northern Europe, of which perfect types are to be met with in Scandinavia, North Germany, and England. In such fair or blonde people the almost transparent skin has its pink tinge by showing the small blood-vessels through it. ”

“ Nothing in the life of the nation has seemed to me more significant than that dark civilization which the colored man has built up in the midst of a white society organized against it. The Negro has been driven under all the burdens of oppression, both material and spiritual, to the brink of desperation, but he has always been saved by his philosophy of life. ”

“ But she told herself that that blackness was an injury to her, and not a benefit, and that it had now become a duty to her,—for his sake, if not for her own,—to dispel its shadows rather than encourage them. ”

“ Look at the hundreds of advertised hair-dyes, used for the purpose of changing Nature! See men with their gray beards dyed black; women with those beautiful [Pg 388] black locks, which but yesterday were as white as the driven snow! Not only this, but even those with light or red whiskers run to the dye-kettle, steal a color which Nature has refused them, and an hour after curse the negro for a complexion that is not stolen. If black is so hateful, why do not gentlemen have their boots whitewashed? If the slaves of the South had been white, the same prejudice would have existed against them. ”

“ On the contrary, fortified with this explanation, I return to my argument with those, who say that blackness is a mere prejudice of race, and that it is not demonstrable that it is the sign of a curse, or the mark of inferiority. Does not Nature herself proclaim it, in her contrast of light and darkness? Day and night, I imagine, would be recognised as apt symbols of error and evil as opposed to truth and goodness, even among the black races, irrespective of any consciousness or reminiscence of their degradation. ”

“ The body, and especially the skull, of a Negro is different from that of the white man. The nervous system, the brain, the mind and soul, are different. I heard the theory put forward in the name of Christian Science that in God’s perfect plan there were no Negroes. Their dark skins were other men’s evil thought about them. All men were really white, and the outward appearance of their skin could be made to correspond to the white idea by concentrated true thought about them. ”

“ At a low stage of culture each race likes its special 458characteristics in an exaggerated form,—a trait which would lead the more vigorous men to persistently select the darkest girls as wives, and thus cause their gradual predominance over the others: while the men, too, would, of course, inherit a darker tint from their mothers. But a still more important consideration is this, that, as Dr. Topinard points out, “Dark colour in the negro is a sign of health,”—naturally, since the darker the dermal pigment, the better are the nerves of temperature protected against the enervating solar rays. ”

“ There is the familiar figure of the African negro, with skin so dark-brown as to be popularly called black, and black hair so naturally frizzed as to be called woolly. Nor are these the only points in which he is unlike us. Indeed, the white men who blacken their faces and friz their hair to look like negros make a very poor imitation, for the negro features are quite distinct; we well know the flat nose, wide nostrils, thick protruding lips, and, when the face is seen in profile, the remarkable projecting jaws. ”

“ But alas! while sociologists gleefully count his bastards and his prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating black man is darkened by the shadow of a vast despair. Men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it as the natural defence of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the “higher” against the “lower” races. To which the Negro cries Amen! and swears that to so much of this strange prejudice as is founded on just homage to civilization, culture, righteousness, and progress, he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance. ”

“ Their most compelling if sometimes unconscious ambition is to be as near white as possible, and their greatest expenditure of energy is concentrated on eradicating any trait or characteristic commonly known as negroid. ”

“ In my opinion, we have nothing to fear from the true blooded negro. It is the half-breed, or those with more or less white blood in their veins, whom I have always found presumptuous, treacherous and revengeful. ”

“ After all, some very well informed and very well meaning people will read what I have now said, and what seems to me so just and reasonable, and will still insist that the color of the negro has something to do with the feeling entertained toward him; that the white man naturally shudders at the thought of contact with one who is black -- that the impulse is one which he can neither resist nor control. ”

“ Not only do we look in vain, in the monotonous blackness of the negro’s face, for those varied tints which adorn a white maiden’s face, borrowing one another’s charms by insensible gradations, but also for those subtle emotional changes which, even if they existed in the negro’s mind, could not paint themselves so delicately on his opaque countenance, betraying every acceleration or retardation in the heart’s beats, indicating every nuance of hope and despair, of pleasure or anguish. ”

“ Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expression of every passion by a greater or less suffusion of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, that immovable veil of black, which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference to them, as uniformly as is the preference of the oroonowtang for the black women over those of his own species? ”

“ The youth's hands were not black, but deeply bronzed like his face, which looked darker than it really was against the whiteness of his hood.
"Take back that word," he said savagely, "or, by Allah, it shall be wiped out in blood!" ”

“ Racial antipathy seems to depend in the degree of its strength upon the degree of physical disparity between given races. In the so-called Latin races of to-day, prejudice against black people is certainly weaker than in the blond races of Northern Europe. Is this aversion a matter of absolute instinct or is it an acquired social characteristic and as such liable to change? ”

“ Further, it is not generally held that in the human family a white skin is a decided mark of degradation, but rather the reverse; and yet nothing can be more certain than that the Negro fœtus has a white skin. ”

“ And it is not merely the demand of the white man that the Negro step aside by himself, for the Negro himself is drawing the colour line, and drawing it with as much enthusiasm as the white man. A genuine race-spirit or race-consciousness is developing. Negroes are meeting prejudice with self-development. ”

“ Thus the black man inherently carries with him, the natural elements of his own dark complexion; and his black and thick skin; his matted wool; his thick skull, and his strong odor, to repel the baneful effects of the sickening malaria of a hot climate were evidently intended to adapt him to it, and thus, also, the other colored races inherently carry with them the elements of their own native complexions. ”

“ And there is still the swarthy whiteness,—we shall venture to marry these ill-agreeing words,—the swarthy whiteness of Judge Pyncheon's face. The features are all gone; there is only the paleness of them left. And how looks it now? There is no window! There is no face! An infinite, inscrutable blackness has annihilated sight! Where is our universe? All crumbled away from us; and we, adrift in chaos, may hearken to the gusts of homeless wind, that go sighing and murmuring about, in quest of what was once a world! ”

“ After a little more time the answer came.
“It is in the skin itself.”
“Oh.” I studied the black men again. “They were born with such skins? They are all of one mother?”
“No. They were born as we were. They are not brothers. Their skins were made black when they became men.” ”

“ The complexion is in general less black, the nose less flat, the lips less protruding, the hair less woolly, the dolichocephaly and prognathism less marked—in a word, the salient features of the Negro race less prominent than elsewhere. ”

“ The palms of the hands and the soles of the feet of negroes are never black, but always yellowish, and in all coloured races the back of the body is a shade darker than the front.
It is noteworthy that the skin of the coloured races is always of a lighter tint in the newly-born than in the adult ; the negro baby is born a light grey colour, and the dark pigment is absent in the negro foetus. ”

“ NIGGER PECULIARITIES.
Perhaps no race of people on the face of the habitable globe are so strongly imbued with individual peculiarities as the free and slave negro population of the United States. Out-heroding Herod in their monstrous attempts of imitating and exceeding the fashions of the whites, the emulative “Darkies” may be seen on Sundays occupying the whole extent of the Broadway pavement, dressed in fashions carried to the very sublime of the ridiculous. ”

“ The dark figures of the negroes, filing noiselessly up the shadowed slope, suddenly grew distinct, wild, and fantastic, within the circle of enchantment made by the flaring light of the torch, only to become dim and spectral again when received back into the dusk. They might have passed for embodiments of those vagaries of the mind, which come from no one knows whither, play their fitful parts within the illuminated circle of the imagination, and vanish as they came. ”

“ The motive is not a desire to elevate the negro, but to humiliate and degrade those of mixed blood; not a desire to bring the negro up, but to cast the mulatto and the quadroon down by forcing him below an arbitrary and hated color line. Men of mixed blood in this country apply the name "negro" to themselves, not because it is a correct ethnological description, but to seem especially devoted to the black side of their parentage. ”

“ The adding to our territories of large areas populated by dark races, some of them already liberally dowered with Negro blood, will enhance the relative importance of the non-Caucasian elements of the population, and largely increase the flow of dark blood toward the white race, until the time shall come when distinctions of color shall lose their importance, which will be but the prelude to a complete racial fusion.
The formation of this future American race is not a pressing problem. ”

“ A little more or less pigment in the skin, the shape of a nose or the slant of the eyes, produce in the average American that most primitive of antagonisms—race prejudice.
Being a primitive instinct, it defies reason, the commandments of religion and the dictates of humanity. In fact, it often becomes irrational, irreligious and inhuman. ”

“ For the blackness—that blackness to which he had been stranger for more than half his life—had come upon him as an enemy smothering him, muffling his head in its terrible black folds, stopping his nostrils with its black fingers, gripping his windpipe with black cords, so that his breathing stopped. ”