Leading scientists declared Blackness a form of leprosy needing cure

Evidence

To Jefferson’s dismay, other American intellectuals did take whitening Blacks very seriously. On February 4, 1797, Benjamin Rush, the APS’s vice president, informed Jefferson that he was “preparing a paper in which I have attempted to prove that the black color … of the Negroes is the effect of a disease in the skin.” Rush gave the paper at a special APS meeting on July 14, 1797. He praised the “elegant and ingenious Essay” of fellow assimilationist Samuel Stanhope Smith, given a decade prior. Rush, however, disagreed with Smith on how to make Black people White again. He rejected climate theory and proclaimed that all Africans were suffering from leprosy. This skin disease explained why they all had ugly Black skin, Rush told APS members. And the whiter their skins became, the healthier they became. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 337

Categorization

• XREF: Rush and Smith as ‘assimilationist’ scientists maps onto the Milgrom/Shapiro institutional work — both show credentialed interlocking elites manufacturing legitimacy for policy positions.
• SEED: Essay angle: Benjamin Rush, the Founding-era ‘woke’ doctor, as the original model for modern colorblind-assimilationist philanthropy that still treats Blackness as pathology.