Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/621

 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RACE-PREJUDICE 603

An Australian woman had a child by a white man : she smoked it and rubbed it with oil to give it a darker color. 1

The children that are born [in Mabaar] are black enough, but the blacker they be the more they are thought of.; wherefore from the day of their birth their parents do rub them every week with oil of sesame", so that they become as black as devils. Moreover, they make their gods black and their devils white, and the images of their saints they do paint black all over.*

There were forty canoes all painted an ocherous brown, which I per- ceived to be the universally favorite color. En passant, I have wondered whether they admire this color from an idea that it resembles the dark bronze of their own bodies. For pure Waganda are not black, by any means. The women and chiefs of Mtesa, who may furnish the best specimens of Waganda,

are nearly all of a bronze or dark reddish brown The native cloths

the national dress which depended from the right shoulders of the larger number of those not immediately connected with the court were of a light brown also. It struck me when I saw the brown skins, brown robes, and brown canoes, that brown must be the national color. 3

The mother [of an Albino boy] is said to have become tired of living apart from the father, who refused to have her while she retained the son. She took him out one day and killed him close to the village of Mabotsa, and nothing was done to her by the authorities. From having met no Albinos in Londa I suspect they are there also put to death. 4

She [an Albino] was most anxious to be made black, but nitrate of silver, taken internally, did not produce its usual effect. 5

The negroes, who generally imagine the devil to be white, consider a black shiny skin, thick lips, and flattened noses as the type of beauty. 6

Where they erect an image in imitation of their Brahman neighbors, the devil is generally of Brahminical lineage. Such images generally accord with those monstrous figures with which all over India orthodox Hindus depict the enemies of their gods, or the terrific forms of Siva or Durga. They are generally made of earthenware, and painted white to look horrible in Hindu eyes. 7

The standard of perfection in color is virgin gold, and as a European lover compares the bosom of his mistress to the whiteness of snow, the East Insular lover compares that of his to the yellowness of the precious metal. 8

1 WAITZ, Anthropologie der Naturvblker, English translation, Vol. I, p. 263.

2 MARCO POLO, The Book of Marco Polo concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, Book III, chap. 18.

3 STANLEY, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 196.

4 LIVINGSTONE, Missionary Travels, p. 576. $ Ibid., p. 576.

6 MOORE, Travels into the Inland Parts of Africa, p. 93. 7CALDWELL, The Tinnevelly Shanars, p. 18. 'CRAWFURD, History of the Indian Archipelago, Vol. I, p. 23.