This is not necessarily on the topic of the blog, but I thought I'd ask your opinion on this anyway... I was watching Neil Tyson Degrasse's Cosmos series. He mentions scientist John Michell (1700's Britain). Apparently there are no portraits of him but he was described as "a little short man, of black complexion, and fat.” The accompanying image of John Michell is of a white man. I found that odd since it's explicitly stated that his complexion was "black." What do you think about that?
It’s something that a lot of people sent messages to me about, and the answer is really that we can’t know because AFAIK there are no portraits of him from the time he was alive. A lot of people like to do the the “well when they said ‘black’ back then they actually meant like, something else" thing and just kind of ignore all the times when well, it actually meant exactly what they said (and we know because text descriptions, documentation, AND artwork survive).
I personally think that the way the description is written (that he is “of black complexion” BUT brilliant) combined with the attitudes towards brown and black-skinned people in Europe during The Enlightenment makes it more likely that he was someone we would consider Black today. There’s also evidence that his findings were attributed to other people, and he was also turned down for quite a few positions in academia.
Considering he was doing this work around the same time that Immanuel Kant was writing of Black people, “not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality”, that would make sense that there was considerable racism he would have been facing.
You can read more about Mitchell here, here, here, and here.
