Whiteness

“ It is in the like of me that clothes show fair and to the like of me that hearts incline. Moreover, in whiteness are many excellences; for instance, the snow falls white from heaven, and it is traditional that white is the most beautiful of colours. The Muslims also glory in white turbans; but I should be tedious, were I to repeat all that may be said in praise of white; little and enough is better than too much. So now I will begin with thy dispraise, O black, O colour of ink and blacksmith's dust, thou whose face is like the crow that brings about lovers' parting! ”

“ I do not laugh. I am quite straight-faced as I ask soberly:
"But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?" Then always, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I am given to understand that whiteness is the ownership of the earth forever and ever, Amen!
Now what is the effect on a man or a nation when it comes passionately to believe such an extraordinary dictum as this? That nations are coming to believe it is manifest daily. Wave on wave, each with increasing virulence, is dashing this new religion of whiteness on the shores of our time. Its first effects are funny: ”

“ Thus, then, that European whiteness of which our species is so proud is no other than a real defect, a sort of deformity which ought to be resigned in these remote climes to the black colour of charcoal, to the sombre red of ochre, or fuller's earth. ”

“ I shall say—what at least admits of no dispute—that the quality of whiteness ascribed to the object snow, is grounded on its exciting in us the sensation of white; and adopting the language already used by the school logicians in the case of the kind of attributes called Relations, I shall term the sensation of white the foundation of the quality whiteness. For logical purposes the sensation is the only essential part of what is meant by the word; the only part which we ever can be concerned in proving. When that is proved, the quality is proved ”

“ EXPERIMENT XIII.
Some Learned Modern Writers15 are of Opinion, that the Account upon which Whiteness and Blackness ought to be call'd, as they commonly are, the two Extreme Colours, is, That Blackness (by which I presume is meant the Bodyes endow'd with it) receives no other Colours; but Whiteness very easily receives them all; whence some of them compare Whiteness to the Aristotelian Materia prima, that being capable of any sort of Forms, as they suppose White Bodyes to be of every kind of Colour. ”

“ White, and indeed a dazzling white, is the colour of his flesh, and redness, deep redness, the colour of his blood tinging his flesh. Whiteness among all the race-colours is the one which best accords with the dignity of man; pure delicate whiteness is among the Caucasian races a mark of high rank, of superior training, of hereditary nobility; wherefore, Lam 4:7, the appearance of the nobles of Jerusalem is likened in whiteness to snow and milk, in redness to corals ”

“ Whiteness, and blackness, and other colours are, on the contrary, not called passive qualities in the same manner with the above-mentioned, but from themselves being produced from passion; for that many changes of colours spring from passion is evident, since when a man blushes he becomes red, and when frightened, pale, and so every thing of this sort. ”

“ It is precisely because the hue called white is the one which is associated with the light of our sun that we regard whiteness as synonymous with absence of colour. We take sunlight as our standard of neutrality, and anything that reflects it without altering the proportions of its constituents we consider as being colourless. ”

“ As the blackness and the whiteness are really the same, the only assignable cause, is a difference in their actions upon us, dependent on the different states of our faculties. The effect is due to a visual antithesis. ”

“ With America's constant reiteration of the superiority of whiteness, the avid search on the part of the black masses for some key to chromatic perfection is easily understood. Now it would seem that science is on the verge of satisfying them. ”

“ Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty, as if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles, japonicas, and pearls; and though various nations have in some way recognised a certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric, grand old kings of Pegu placing the title "Lord of the White Elephants" above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger; ”

“ I have been tempted to believe that they also have a colouring substance, since the long-continued action of a powerful sun evidently blackens them. This circumstance has even made me believe that whiteness is natural to all men, and that there was but one primitive race which has degenerated according to different climates. ”

“ And I shall insert an Essay, as well Speculative as Historical, of the Nature of Whiteness and Blackness, that you may have a Specimen of the History of Colours, I have sometimes had thoughts of; and if you dislike not the Method I have made use of, I hope, you, and some of the Virtuosi, your friends, may be thereby invited to go thorow with Red, Blew, Yellow, and the rest of the particular Colours, as I have done with White and Black, but with farr more sagacity and success. ”

“ Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as the visible absence of colour; and at the same time the concrete of all colours; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows—a colourless, all-colour of atheism from which we shrink? ”

“ he had kept The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o'er him wept. ”

“ and the whiteness in thy cheek Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Alas! if color could disgrace a people, how deep in the nethermost regions of shame, would that color be, which is called white in the United States; frequently with such utter recklessness of truth. White! ”

“ I may here express my opinion in passing that the white colour of the skin is not natural to man, but that by nature he has a black or brown skin, like our forefathers the Hindus; that consequently a white man has never originally sprung from the womb of Nature, and that thus there is no such thing as a white race, much as this is talked of, but every white man is a faded or bleached one. Forced into this strange world, where he only exists like an exotic plant, and like this requires in winter the hothouse, in the course of thousands of years man became white. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Kenneth, what you and all the rest of Negroes need is to learn that you belong to a race that was centuries old when the first white man came into the world. You’ve got to learn that a large part of this thing they call ‘white civilization’ was made by black hands, as well as by yellow and brown and red hands, too, besides what white hands have created. You’ve got to learn that the Negro to-day is contributing as much of the work that makes this civilization possible as the white race, if not more. ”

“ And if we ask what is ‘white’ we can only say, ‘that it is a term used to designate the absence of color’—that is all, and no sign whatever of ‘race integrity.’ We have already indicated that science and investigation point to the fact that primitive man was not white. ”

“ Ellis; "if you should settle down here, you'll have to be either one thing or other—white or coloured. Either you must live exclusively amongst coloured people, or go to the whites and remain with them. But to do the latter, you must bear in mind that it must never be known that you have a drop of African blood in your veins, or you would be shunned as if you were a pestilence; no matter how fair in complexion or how white you may be." ”

“ He was originally black, and woolly headed, like other negroes; but, at this time, he was almost entirely white, and of a “clear, fresh, and delicate complexion.” His hair, also, was in part changed, and was exactly that of fair white people; of a flaxen hue, and perfectly free from curling.
From these examples my readers may learn that no one color is essential to the nature of the body; and that, as white men have become black, and red and black men white, all mankind, how different soever they may now appear, may have descended from Adam and Eve, whatever their complexion might have been. ”

“ God tells me it is white—he knows—he never tortures. He doesn't keep me here to die—no, I can't die here in the dark. I won't get to heaven if I do. Oh! yes, yes, yes, I have a white soul, but my skin is not," she rather murmurs than speaks, continuing to hold down her head, while parting her long, clustering hair over her shoulders. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The advance made by your race in America is the reflection of the white man’s civilization. Just that and nothing more. The negro lives in the light of the white man’s civilization and reflects a part of that light.
He imitates an example kept before his eyes; copies models never out of his sight; echoes the words the white man utters; patterns after the manners and the methods of the whites around him, and thus reflects our civilization. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Although he had travelled far, yet was his face white; white like those hermits that dwell apart in caves; white was he as the live white of the growing lily, as the pallor of the moon in daylight; and the men and women of the city marvelled, for they were a dark people that worked in the furrows of the earth and lived daily in the sun. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In ceremonial addresses, as at the green corn dance and ball play, the people figuratively partake of white food and after the dance or the game return along the white trail to their white houses. In love charms the man, in order to induce the woman to cast her lot with his, boasts “I am a white man,” implying that all is happiness where he is. White beads have the same meaning in the bead conjuring and white was the color of the stone pipe anciently used in ratifying peace treaties. ”

“ Our face bleach will turn the skin of a black or brown person four or five shades lighter, and of a mulatto perfectly white. When you get the color you wish, stop using the preparation.'
"Just look at those heads!—'Before using' and 'After using.' We'd better hurry, or there'll be no negroes to disfranchise! If they don't stop till they get the color they desire, and the stuff works according to contract, they'll all be white. ”

“ Indeed, from the physical point of view, the pure white is weaker than the dark races, worse prepared for the combat of life, with inferior viability. This has been shown by the careful researches of statisticians.16 But in the white this is more than compensated by the development of the nervous system and the intellectual power. He can bear greater mental strain than any other race, and the activity of his mind supplies him with means to overcome the inferiority of his body, and thus places him at the head of the whole species. ”