Of Black Skin and Biopower: Lessons from the Eighteenth Century.

The author discusses the medical perception of the black people's skin color based on the works of physicians Benjamin Rush and Thomas Beddoes in the 18th century and its implications for the modern concept of blackness and race. Topics discussed include the concept of biopolitics from historian Michel Foucault and its link in the issue of racism and skin color, the manifestation of hostility toward blackness, and the works of Rush and Beddoes to reduce or erase the black skin to a pathology.