Who's Black and Why? by Who’s Black & Why. A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race (2022)

Author:Who’s Black & Why. A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race (2022)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

Chapter 2: On the Curliness and Roughness of Their Hair

Concerning the curliness of Ethiopians’ hair, they all have the same habit of oiling their hair with palm oil, as some are wont to do, although we know that they use the seeds of the Psyllium plant to make their hair curly.44 Other Oriental peoples oil their hair to remove curliness. Most cholerics as well as certain animals have curly hair.

I declare that it [curliness] depends first and foremost on the imagination of the children of the first Ethiopian. This first man had a deficiency in the nourishing juice as well as an abundance of swollen common protuberances resulting from said deficiency. The nodes became bent due to the choleric temperament that heats the body excessively, causing it to dry.

It is for this reason that the hair of Ethiopians is short and rough. Similarly, in plants and trees a deficiency in their nourishing sap will cause them to grow laterally rather than vertically, will dry up the hay and bend the bark of trees. Just in the same way hairdressers make hair curly by applying a curling iron. It must be reckoned, however, that the habits of nature already accomplished most of its work given the great expanse of time that has passed, as we observe in animals. Similarly, observation has established that short, coarse hair is more easily curled than long, soft hair, and that hair with color is by nature coarser than white hair. Hardness is the result of many protuberances in the hair.

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