Covering the annual convention of the black National Medical Association last summer, Andrew Skolnick, an editor at the Journal of the American Medical Association, listened in disbelief as Dr. Patricia Newton, a psychiatrist affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, waxed eloquent about the wonders of melanin. These melanist notions and other extremes of Afrocentrism are discomforting to many black educators. Much of Afrocentrism, he says, is based on solid scholarship. Barry Mehler, a white Ferris State professor who specializes in investigating white racism, only recently became aware of the melanist advocates and was shocked by the wide acceptance of their views. In a society that has treated blacks as inferiors because of the color of their skin, it is hardly surprising that many of them now embrace melanist doctrine.
Melanin is the strongest chemical in the human body.
By the same token, I'm sympathetic to the social forces that produce it. Time Inc. All rights reserved.