Luke Ford

Anthropologist Peter Frost writes: This older way of viewing skin color—personal, relativistic, and gender-oriented—has been studied by David Goldenberg with respect to the Jews of the ancient world.

The Jews considered their skin to be light brown. A second-century rabbi compared it to “the boxwood tree, neither black nor white, but in between” (Goldenberg, 2003, p. 95). In papyri from Ptolemaic Egypt, Jews are almost always described as “honey-colored” (Cohen, 1999, pp. 29-30).

Nonetheless, Jewish women were preferentially referred to as “white.” This reflected the naturally lighter complexion of women, which was made lighter still by sun avoidance and various cosmetics. One rabbinic text advises, “He who wishes to whiten his daughter’s complexion, let him give her milk and young fowl,” while another recommends using olive oil as a body lotion for the same purpose. A Midrash recounts that after returning from exile in Babylon the men didn’t wish to marry the women who came with them because the sun had darkened their faces on the long journey home (Goldenberg, 2003, p. 86). This preference is implicit in a rabbinic discussion of a vow “not to marry a particular woman who is ugly, but it turns out that the woman is beautiful; or black (dark;shehorah), but it turns out that she is white (fair; levanah); or short, but she is tall. Even if she was ugly, but became beautiful; or black, and became white” (Goldenberg, 2003, pp. 85-86).

“White” was also the preferred color of infants. According to a rabbinic tradition, if a woman was suspected of infidelity and found innocent, she would go through the following changes: “if she formerly bore ugly babies, she will now bear beautiful babies; if she formerly bore dark [shehorin] children, she will now bear fair [levanim] children” (Goldenberg, 2003, p. 96).

In the above cases, the terms “white” and “black” were projected onto individuals and onto the two sexes in a relative sense that is better translated by “light” and “dark.” This relativism also held true when the same terms were projected onto ethnic groups. Hence, the Jews often called themselves “white” in relation to darker-skinned peoples, usually Egyptians or kushi (black Africans).

For example, in one parable a kushit maidservant claims she is the most beautiful of her household. Her matronah (a free woman of good family) replies: “Come the morning and we’ll see who is black [shahor] and who is white [lavan]” (Goldenberg, 2003, p. 88). Interestingly, the Jews also considered themselves “white” in comparison to Arabs (Goldenberg,2003, pp. 120-124).

There was also the reverse semantic process: the description of an individual’s skin color by a word that originally applied to an ethnic group. A lighter-skinned Jew could for instance be called a germani, and a darker-skinned Jew a kushi. There are even cases of the word kushi being used for inanimate objects, like dark wine (Goldenberg, 2003, p. 116).

Whatever the case, use of color terms in an ethnic sense tended to carry over values from the non-ethnic sense, specifically the aesthetic ones associated with the lighter skin of women and infants. We see this in a commentary on Gen 12:11 where Abraham enters Egypt and, fearing that the Egyptians will covet his wife, says: “Now I know that you are a beautiful woman.” This is explained in the commentary as meaning: “Now we are about to enter a place of ugly and dark [people]” (Goldenberg, 2003, p. 86).

The Egyptians were the Dark Other. Depreciation of their darker skin became associated with negative values, not only ugliness but also uncleanliness and servility. In rabbinic writings, Egypt is called “a house of slaves” and the Pharaoh himself is said to be a “slave.” In one text, Jacob debates whether to go to Egypt: “Shall I go to an unclean land, among slaves, the children of Ham?” (Goldenberg, 2003, pp. 160-161). This view is preserved in a homily by the third-century Christian writer Origen:

But Pharao easily reduced the Egyptian people to bondage to himself, nor is it written that he did this by force. For the Egyptians are prone to a degenerate life and quickly sink to every slavery of the vices. Look at the origin of the race and you will discover that their father Cham, who had laughed at his father’s nakedness, deserved a judgment of this kind, that his son Chanaan should be a servant to his brothers, in which case the condition of bondage would prove the wickedness of his conduct. Not without merit, therefore, does the discolored posterity imitate the ignobility of the race.

Homily on Genesis XVI

Most academics argue that dark skin became mentally associated with slavery through the Atlantic slave trade of the 16th to 19th centuries. Others, like Bernard Lewis, believe this mental association goes back to the expansion of the Muslim world into Africa in the seventh century (Lewis, 1990). Actually, it seems to go even farther back, at least to the third century and perhaps even to the establishment of Roman rule over the region (Goldenberg, 2003, pp. 155-156, 168-174). From that time onward, a pigmentocracy took shape in Egypt with Greeks, Jews, and Romans forming the dominant class. Meanwhile, a trade in slaves grew and developed between sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Once the Roman Empire had stopped growing, and stopped taking large numbers of prisoners of war, trade became the main source of domestic servants. It is perhaps significant that the kushitmaidservant appears as a recurring motif in rabbinic literature, since that period—Late Antiquity—would correspond to the time when the black slave trade was slowly but steadily growing (Goldenberg, 2003, pp. 126-128).

This trade may have undermined the status of Egyptians as the Dark Other. Initially, the kushi were often seen as an especially dark sort of Egyptian, perhaps because they were usually encountered in the Middle East as subjects of the Pharaoh (Goldenberg, 2003, pp. 17, 109, 301 n111). In Late Antiquity, they emerged more and more as a distinct category, probably because they were becoming more and more numerous as slaves, particularly in the eastern provinces of the Empire. It was during this time that their dark skin came to be explained as a curse on their forefather Kush, whose father Ham had sinned either by seeing Noah naked or by copulating in the Ark. In one text, Noah curses Ham with the words: “May your progeny be dark and ugly” (Goldenberg, 2003, p. 97). This is not a specifically Jewish tradition, being also attested in early Christian and early Islamic writings (Goldenberg, 2003, pp. 150-177).

…I belong to a writers group, and I’m continually exposed to the way they think and write. One thing I’ve learned is that most young writers are reluctant to describe the physical appearance of their characters. They say that the reader should be free to project his or her own appearance on to the characters.

The situation is a bit different with picture books for children. In that case, the characters have to look a certain way. This leads to a dilemma: what proportion of the characters should be white and what proportion non-white? Many authors err on the side of safety by making most of the characters non-white.

With the decline of Christianity, the mental space it once occupied has been replaced by the ethos of non-discrimination, which now functions just like a religion. People often react angrily if you ask them to explain why it is always wrong to discriminate. Even when they don’t get angry, they’ll offer circular reasons. It is wrong to discriminate because a good person does not discriminate.

You ask me whether the ethos of non-discrimination is a bad thing. I believe it is. One cannot be a sentient human being without discriminating every minute of every day. We discriminate in the food we choose to eat, in the beliefs we choose to accept, and in the people we choose to frequent and, ultimately, marry.

You’ll probably reply that I’m using the word “discriminate” in a broad sense and that you mean it in a narrow sense. Unfortunately, the distinction between broad and narrow is less and less clear. Is it wrong to discriminate against transsexuals? Now it is. And now we are faced with the laborious task of abolishing male and female washrooms — so that transsexuals will not feel excluded from society.

But it doesn’t end there. What about all the books — including great works of literature — that glorify “heteronormative values” and “cis-normative values”? They will have to go. And they are going. Just look at the children’s books that are now being published. That’s your future.

The ethos of non-discrimination will make Communism seem like a walk in the park.