Comments on: FEAR OF BLACKNESS PART II – Dana Marniche

By: Carol Taylor 1st Black USA Flight Attendant

Carol Taylor 1st Black USA Flight Attendant — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:27:22 +0000

Dana, email me – this information is great!

By: Dana

Dana — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 21:55:52 +0000

I think it s from Rogers that I had first seen the painting of Charlotte-Sophia and his mention in one of the books that she was actually described as a brown or like like Josephine, Napoleons wife who was said to have covered her face with makeup to lighten up. I agree that Moor for a time seems to have become synonomous with the classical black African type.

By: Egmond Codfried

Egmond Codfried — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 13:55:57 +0000

[quote]The term “blackamoor” was used for Haydn and other Europeans not because they were black Moors, but because they were black as Moors. Beethoven who appears in some early paintings dark brown color and frizzled hair, was called “the black Spaniard of Bonn” and “the Moor”. (A certain Frau Fischer, an intimate acquaintance of Beethoven, describes him thus, “Short, stocky, broad shoulders, short neck, round nose, blackish-brown complexion.” From R. H. Schauffler, The Man Who Freed Music, Vol. I, p. 18, 1929). Another European mentioned by Rogers had commented that if he was to come back today he would never have recognized himself from most of his portrayals.)[/quote]

I’m happy with this quote from Rogers. Yet in some cases he did not realise that the white colour on portraits was fake, as he speaks of Charlotte- Sophie of Mecklenburg Strelitz as ‘a nordic’ type. In reality she was quite brown and frizzy haired.
This brings us to ‘looking like a Moor’ or ‘being a Moor.’ These people should be regarded as Europeans and African Europeans, who used the images of Moors as symbols of their black identity. At some time they became the nobility and kings of Europe and regarded their colour as superior to whites. The word Moor to me is an old fashioned way of saying ‘Classical African.’ The African type which has all the classical featrures of the African Man: black skin, frizzy hair, subnasal prognatism, flat nose, thick lips etc. The Moor in western art stands for the figure of a symbolic Moor in heraldry and on portraits, and are symbols of blue blood, who were the highest nobility.

By: Dana Marniche

Dana Marniche — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:37:18 +0000

Correction – *Eleventh century Mesopotamian Iraqi physician Ibn Butlan, quoted by historian Bernard Lewis, said of the Berber women brought into Iraq as concubines, “Their color is mostly black though some pale ones can be found among them. If you can find one whose mother is of Kutama, whose father is of Sanhaja, and whose origin is Masmuda, then you will find her naturally inclined to obedience and loyalty in all matters, active in service, suited both to motherhood and to pleasure, for they are the most solicitous in caring for their children.”“

Correction readers – This was quoted not by Bernard lewis but by Martha A. Brozyna in Gender and Sexuality in the Middle Ages: A Medieval Source Documents Reader 2005 p. 303