Al-Tunisï’s civilizational judgments coexisted with genuine appreciation of blackness

Evidence

It is important to remember, however, that although al-Tunisï reviled the “uncivilized” behavior of women, usually black women, in his account, these racial distinctions are not based on a hatred of blacks. Perhaps remembering the Sudanese families of his father and grandfather, Muhammad al- Tunisï includes a number of interesting excerpts from different poems in his narrative, in which he explains the beauties of blackness and how one could love a brownor black-skinned woman. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 174

Categorization

• XREF: Nuances any assumption that early Arab civilizational rankings of black Africans were straightforwardly racist — relevant to the reader’s comparative coloniality framework.