The Beauty of Blackness as seen by early writers

[Jamila]

CONGO

"The indigenous peoples of the Congo," he wrote, "are all black in color, some more so, some less so. Many are to be seen who are the color of chestnut and some tend to be more olive-colored. But the one who is of the deepest black in color is held by them to be the most beautiful. Some are born somewhat light-skinned, but as they grow older they become darker and darker. This occurs because their mothers make use of the artifice of an ointment... with which they anoint their infants, exposing them once they have been anointed, to the rays of the sun, then leaving them there for long periods, and repeating this action over and over... There are some children who although their parents are black, are born white skinned and although they anoint them and use all manners of artifice they can never be transformed into blackskinned people. And these are regarded by the Congolese as monsters. They have the same features and the same tightly curled hair as the black Congolese, but their skin is white and they are short-sighted....As a result, children in those areas, where a white has never been seen before, would become terrified, fleeing in horror from us, no less than our children here are terrified by the sight of a black also fleeing in horror for them.

But they do not want us to call them Negroes (negros) but Blacks (Prietos); amongst them only slaves are called Negroes and thus amongst them it is the same things to say negro as to say slave."

[Teruel, Antonio de, Narrative Description of...the Kingdom of the Congo (1663-1664) Ms. 3533:3574/National Library, Madrid, Spain]

SOUTH INDIA

"It is a fact that in this country when a child is born they anoint him once a week with oil of sesame, and this makes him grow much darker than when he was born. For I assure you that the darkest man is here the most highly esteemed and considered better than the others who are not so dark. Let me add that in very truth these people portray and depict their gods and their idols black and their devils white as snow. For they say the God and all the saints are black and the devils are all white. That is why they portray them as I have described. And similarly they make the images of their idols all black."

[Marco Polo, The Travels, translated and with an Introduction by Ronald Latham, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1958]

SOUTHEAST ASIA

"For the complexion of men, they consider black the most beautiful. In all the kingdoms of the southern region, it is the same."

[Nan Ts'i Chou, quoted by Rene Gaston Georges Maspero, The Kingdom of Champa. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949]


The GLOBAL AFRICAN PRESENCE - Articles by Runoko Rashidi

[Jamila]

"Nearly all black and brown skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare....Where dark complexions are massed, they make the whites look bleached-out, unwholesome, and sometimes frankly ghastly. I could notice this as a boy, down South in the slavery days before the war. The splendid black satin skin of the South African Zulus of Durban seemed to me to come very close to perfection...."

"The white man's complexion makes no concealments. It can't. It seemed to have been designed as a catch-all for everything that can damage it. Ladies have to paint it, and powder it, and cosmetic it, and diet it with arsenic, and enamel it, and be always enticing it, and persuading it, and pestering it, and fussing at it, to make it beautiful; and they do not succeed. But these efforts show what they think of the natural complexion, as distributed. As distributed it needs these helps. The complexion which they try to counterfeit is one which nature restricts to the few--to the very few. To ninety-nine persons she gives a bad complexion, to the hundredth a good one. The hundredth can keep it--how long? Ten years, perhaps."

"The advantage is with the Zulu, I think. He starts with a beautiful complexion, and it will last him through. And as for the Indian brown--firm, smooth, blemishless, pleasant, and restful to the eye, afraid of no color, harmonizing with all colors and adding a grace to them all--I think there is no sort of chance for the average white complexion against that rich and perfect tint." {Mark Twain}

[Jamila]

"it is my conviction that a white skin is not natural to man, and that by nature he has either a black or brown skin like our forefathers, the Hindoos, and that the white man was never originally created by nature; and that, therefore, there is no race of white people, much as it is talked about, but every white man is a bleached one." {Arthur Schopenhauer}

[Sourakhata]

Originally Posted by Jamila

"Where dark complexions are massed, they make the whites look bleached-out, unwholesome, and sometimes frankly ghastly. I could notice this as a boy, down South in the slavery days before the war. The splendid black satin skin of the South African Zulus of Durban seemed to me to come very close to perfection...."

No doubt it's perfection that Mother Nature has endowed us with..!

[Pragmatic]

It is difficult to discuss color. By no stretch of the imagination can one African, black, or American find any proper definition, with, or without the help of his “European” disciple. After many a book and question one is left to ponder what is “Black”, are we that definition? What of the root of this word? First we must find, the truest since of black as a definition.


Middle English blak, from Old English blæc; see bhel-1 in Indo-European roots

• 4. Very dark in color: rich black soil; black, wavy hair.
  
  
• 5. Soiled, as from soot; dirty: feet black from playing outdoors.
  
  
• 6. Evil; wicked: the pirates' black deeds.
  
  
• 7. Cheerless and depressing; gloomy: black thoughts.
  
  
• 8. Being or characterized by morbid or grimly satiric humor: a black
• comedy.
  
  
• 9. Marked by anger or sullenness: gave me a black look.
  
  
• 10. Attended with disaster; calamitous: a black day; the stock market crash on Black Friday.
  
  
• 11. Deserving of, indicating, or incurring censure or dishonor: "Man ... has written one of his blackest records as a destroyer on the oceanic islands" Rachel Carson.

Etymology:

Middle English etimologie, from Old French ethimologie, from Medieval Latin ethimologia, from Latin etymologia, from Greek etumologi : etumon, true sense of a word; see etymon + -logi, -logy.]


true sense of a word… At the root of this word we may be discouraged to understand in reference to it’s etymology, that one can be sure, in its frankness, and meaning, that it’s use actually undermines good reason, and logic of one's own personal understanding.

Let’s look at hue: The property of colors by which they can be perceived as ranging from red through yellow, green, and blue, as determined by the dominant wavelength of the light. See Table at color. Also from [Middle English, color, form, from Old English hw, ho.]

Question ('s):

• Can you reduce a wave length to a inferior position?
  
  
• What of it’s form?

Form is defined as:

1. The essence of something

Or

b. The mode in which a thing exists, acts, or manifests itself; kind

Manifest is defined as to show something clearly: to make something evident by showing or demonstrating it very clearly

understandable: capable of being understood

The definition of understood is:


1. grasp the meaning of something: to know or be able to explain to yourself the nature of somebody or something, or the meaning or cause of something

I can’t understand what all the fuss is about.

2. come to know something: to realize or become aware of something

Only then did she understand the urgency of the situation.

3. be able to handle: to know and be able to use something such as a foreign language

She thoroughly understood the workings of the system.

4. know and sympathize: to recognize somebody’s character or somebody’s situation, especially in a sympathetic, tolerant, or empathetic way

It’s such a relief to find someone who understands.

5. take as meant: to interpret something in a particular way, or to infer or deduce a particular meaning from something

I understood it as a peacemaking gesture.
Am I to understand from this that you are refusing our offer?

6. take as settled: to believe something to be agreed, settled, or firmly communicated

The bank was given to understand that you would repay the loan in six months.

7. know by learning or hearing: to gather or assume something on the basis of having heard or been told it

They’re not due back, so I understand, until next Tuesday.


Hence, you cannot deduce the value of color as a hue .

Black, as a hue is not just merely something imagined to be a real, actual, or a current thing. It is not merely something written about being present as a source of dis satification. It is not something that requires your disapproval or dislike.

Properties of Blackness:

• It is the sound of music. A quality that makes you move your hips or knod your head to a bashing beat.
  
  
• It is the legality of that which lays a claim or appearance of our legal birthright; our blessing.
  
  
• In physics our hue is used to saturate the property or aspects of something that involves light.
  
  
• As a property of visual sensation. Red, blue, and green, or other shades depend on this object as a source of reflection; as a source of light that reflects there perception..

Not in your wildest imagination, can one institute, as an equivalent of logic, the “wishing away” the convenience of night, without no regard to sleep. Thus, to value the character of blackness, as a “personality makeup,” becomes a clear sign of an overdeveloped sense of self worth, at "the obligation of the importance of others". A manifestation of a pathetic sense of inferiority. Allowing the worth or importance of others at your adequate or satisfactory usefulness to be oriented conclusively; beyond a matter of all doubt.

This source of value allows one to “create” an image inside of themselves of someone based on the “color of there skin“ as a favor to the unbeknownst victims self esteem.

This approvement; This supportive attitude of kindness. This “preferential treatment”; This small gift of intimacy that is advantageous, not to resemble favoritism as a unfair advantage, but a favorable opinion, becomes reciprocal, taken from Late 16th century. Formed from Latin reciprocus , literally “that goes backward and forward,” from, ultimately, re- “backward” + pro- “forward.”]

Because one can train and deduce a human, not his color. Humans can assume the pretense or function of indifference, ie. “Equal Rights”…

Every color of humanity is a official agreement to live life on life terms; blissfully *ignorant. To value the character of someone based on the color of there skin validates the valuable existence of imagination; a creative act: an act of creating a semblance of reality, especially in literature; especially in the mind where ideas, thoughts, and images are formed.

peace be upon you