The Black Man's Place in South AfricaNielsen, Peter, active 1922-1937
History
The Black Man's Place in South Africa
Nielsen, Peter, active 1922-1937
Black people -- South Africa
Extreme hairiness of body, on the other hand, which might well be taken
as a simian or vestigial character, is seldom met with in the Bantu, but
is equally common among Europeans and Australian aboriginals and is
found particularly developed in the Ainu of Japan. The texture also of
the African's hair is less like that of the hair of the man-like apes
than is the hair of the European. The proportions of the limbs of the
Europeans seem, on the average, to be nearer to the supposed prototype
of man than those of the Bantu. The specifically human development of
the red lips is more pronounced in the African than in the European,[3]
and if there is anything in what has been called the "god-like erectness
of the human carriage" then it must be admitted that the Bantu women
exhibit a straightness of form which may well be envied by the ladies of
civilisation.
It is generally accepted that the African Natives have a bodily odour of
their own which is _sui generis_ in that it is supposed to be different
from that of other human races. Some early travellers have compared it
with the smell of the female crocodile, and many people believe it to be
a racial characteristic denoting a comparatively humble origin and
intended by nature as a signal or warning for the rest of human kind
against close physical contact with the African race. A recent student
of the Negro question in America gives it as his opinion that this odour
is "something which the Negroes will have difficulty in living down."[4]
To most Europeans this smell seems to be more or less unpleasant but it
must not be forgotten that it does not seem to affect the large numbers
of white men of all nationalities who have found and still find pleasure
in continued and intimate intercourse with African women. It would seem
as if highly "refined" Europeans are nowadays given to exaggerate the
sensation produced on their over delicate olfactory nerves by the
exhalations caused by perspiration through a healthy and porous skin. In
many of the so-called Ladies' Journals published in England and America
advertisements appear regularly vaunting chemical preparations for the
disguising of the odour of perspiration which, it is alleged, mars the
attractiveness of women. If this is so it would seem that the nostrils
of the modern European are rather too easily offended by the natural
smell of his kind. However this may be there is no evidence for
believing that the African's bodily smell is more animal-like than that
of any other race.
If there is one thing which the white man of South Africa is sure about
it is the comparative thickness of the "nigger skull," but this notion
also would appear to be one of the many which have no foundation in
fact.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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