Even racist descriptions of Africans relied on biblical curse narratives

Evidence

The Hottentots, for instance, while generally regarded in completely negative terms as being devoid of any of the characteristics that might have rendered them human, nonetheless had their very negativity expressed in terms that were culled from a biblical source. As Thomas Herbert put it in 1627, “The natives being propagated from Ham both in their Visages and Natures seem to inherit his malediction.” — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 328

Categorization

• XREF: The Hamitic curse as a legitimating genealogy connects to theories about the divine punishment of dark-skinned peoples persisting into early modern racial science.