Melanophobia

The sympathy of Maga with white oppressors of black men, has been shown in several recent articles, in which it classes negroes with monkeys and gorillas; as inferior to the whites as white men are to angels.—Vol. xci, p 4; and xcvii, 34, 152. This, and its unjust and bitter invectives against the anti-slavery party, as hypocrites and ultra-radicals,—xcix, 589, 590—are among the most melancholy instances of Melanophobia with which we are acquainted.

Modern commentators and preachers explain the first four verses of the first chapter as referring to the “Church’s love unto Christ” and the fifth verse as “the Church’s confession of her deformity.” Surely this illegitimate idea was hatched in a brain diseased with what Dr. Edward W[ilmot] Blyden calls “melanophobia.”[…]Edward W. Blyden, LL.D., writing from Liberia, says: “[…]The cure for American colorphobia, or more accurately, melanophobia is in the heart of Africa.”

[…]papers of the last two months, arising from every section of the country, that a glance into the medical aspects of melanophobia cannot be devoid of interest and should not pass unobserved. In the leading journals from the North and South there have appeared editorials of great acumen and power, but none seem as yet to have dealt, except in a superficial manner, with the race problem as seen from a biological, ethnological or medical standpoint.

Melanophobia, or fear of the black, may be pragmatically as valuable a racial defence for the white as the counter-instinct of philoleucosis, or love of the white, is a force of racial uplifting for the black.

Robert has hair a shade lighter than your lady’s, Nannee’s a shade or two darker. Both have black eyes. I am blacker than either. But I ought not to tell you so, for having become Yankee now, of course you are being steeped in their melanophobia.

Our press tells us daily of outrages and stupidities committed under pressure of melanophobia.

Restaurants and bars could put up signs saying “Only Leucoderms Will Be Served,” which would look appropriately ridiculous. And it might be possible to work out a quarantine for real-estate agents infected with melanophobia.[…]It is odd that a beautiful skin should be a handicap; and I, at least, find the darker human skins more attractive than the pale ones. This must be generally true if one can judge by the amount of time paleface people spend in trying to darken their skins. This leucoderm preoccupation with getting dark must look ridiculous to a melanoderm; it certainly makes melanophobia seem odd.

Acculturation and assimilation (“Creolization”), and their solvent action on traditional cultures and values, are under-emphasized; a broody melanophobia prevails.