Black as Evil

[Swaminathan Madhuresan]

Kendra Crossen Burroughs writes:
>the great mystery that color prejudice appears to be virtually universal.
> [...] And this is a time when the clash of opposites in
>duality--"black and white"--reach their height, prophesied in several
>traditions to culminate in a colossal war between good and evil.

Ancient Greeks were ambiguous about the evil nature of black:
> From an old post,
<
 There is "dies ater" 'a dark day', though I can't remember any idiom where
 "niger" is 'evil', except "nigromantia" 'black magic', which is a
 misrendering of Greek "nekromanteia" 'magic performed on a funeral site,
 raising the dead (as a means of getting an oracle)'. Interestingly Latin
 has two words corresponding to 'black': "niger" glossed (by Cassell's) as
 'shining black' and "ater" glossed as 'dull black'. I read somewhere the
 remark that the skin color of an "Aethiops" should be called "Niger", while
 the color of a hanged (presumably white-skinned in life!) person was
 "ater". I don't know if there is ancient authority for the latter. "Niger"
 was also used for black hair, and is hence found as the cognomen of at
 least one Roman family. It is an interesting fact that color words were not
 used as racial tags in Classical Latin. The word for 'black' person is
 invariably the Greek loan-word "Aethiops", or "Numidius". The word "Afer"
 "Africa" and "Africanus" referred to people and things pertaining to the
 Semitic Carthaginians -- and presumably was originally a self-description.
 There is no term for 'white person' -- probably because Greeks and romans
 didn't come into anything like regular contact with non-whites until
 comparatively late.>


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