Books Quote by Ibram X. Kendi

““English physician Charles White, the well-known author of a treatise on midwifery, entered the debate over species in 1799. Unlike Scotland’s Lord Kames, White circled around religion and employed a new method of proving the existence of separate race species—comparative anatomy. He did not want the conclusions in his Account on the Regular Gradation in Man to “be construed so as to give the smallest countenance to the pernicious practice of enslaving mankind.” His only objective was “to investigate the truth.” White disputed Buffon’s legendary contention that since interracial unions were fertile, the races had to be of the same species. Actually, orangutans had been “known to carry off negro-boys, girls, and even women,” he said, sometimes enslaving them for “brutal passion.” On the natural scale, Europeans were the highest and Africans the lowest, approaching “nearer to the brute creation than any other of the human species.” Blacks were superior in areas where apes were superior to humans—seeing, hearing, smelling, memorizing things, and chewing food. “The PENIS of an African is larger than that of an European,” White told his readers. Most anatomical museums in Europe preserved Black penises, and, he noted, “I have one in mine.””

— Ibram X. Kendi