Fair Women, Dark Men: The Forgotten Root

Which came first, color prejudice or black slavery? Was it slavery that eventually created negative feelings toward dark skin? Or was it the other way around? Perhaps these feelings already existed when black slavery first arose, eventually making it more and more inhuman.

So begins an inquiry that will lead the reader across time and space over familiar and not-so-familiar terrain. Before becoming a mark of race and slavery, skin color, or rather skin color as a psychological reality, had another meaning. A sexual meaning. In earlier times, in settings where people were of a similar ethnic background, the main difference in skin color was between men and women. This is because women have less melanin in their skin and less blood in its outer layers. In simpler language, women are fairer and men browner and ruddier.

This older meaning has been largely forgotten in modern Western culture, although we still speak of the "fair sex" and the "tall, dark, and handsome man." In other cultures, and in other historical periods, it played a key role in defining femininity and masculinity. Fair skin and dark skin meant different things to the observer. They evoked different feelings.

With the rise of black slavery, the feelings that flowed from this earlier meaning of skin color took on a new role. And began to serve new ends . . .