"The medical fascination with the "white negro" reflected the belief of some scientists, who, pointing to the straight hair and finer features of property-owning free Blacks and of enslaved house servants, proposed that African-Americans were turning white as a response to the "civilizing influences of Western, European cultures". Of course, African Americans were acquiring European features the natural way, but many whites maintained a high level of denial about the degree of Black-white mating.
On a superficial level, the spectacle of a Black person turning white was simply a freakish reversal of nature, on the level of a bearded lady or a hermaphrodite. On another, deeper level he posed an implicit threat to civilization, because white skin was held to denote evolutionary advantage during this period, when most scientists insisted that whites were the superior humans or perhaps even the only true humans.
If a Negro could turn white, what would become of the special evolutionary status that whites enjoyed? If a Negro's black skin could be shed so simply, what, if anything, did it mean to be a Negro? The justification for slavery and unequal treatment of all kinds evaporated with skin color."
Chapter 3- Medical Apartheid, Harriet A. Washington
