Curse theory displaced climate theory as the racist explanation for Blackness

Evidence

For English travel writer George Best, climate theory fell apart when he saw on an Arctic voyage in 1577 that the Inuit people in northeastern Canada were darker than the people living in the hotter south. … He found an alternative: “holy Scripture,” or the curse theory that had recently been articulated by a Dominican Friar in Peru and a handful of French intellectuals, a theory more enticing to slaveholders. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 71

Categorization

• XREF: This is a textbook example of Kendi’s inversion in action — the theory more useful to slaveholders wins, not the accurate one. Maps directly onto the chapter’s core method. — connects to: the MOC “The False Compass: How Racial Categories Reorder Bodies, Minds, and the Self”
• QUESTION: Worth checking whether the Inuit observation was factually accurate or itself a European rationalization — the ‘anomaly’ that toppled climate theory is doing a lot of work.