Traders’ most profitable commodity proved their nakedness claims false.

Evidence

It was the irony of the age: slave traders knew that cloth was the most desired commodity in both places, but at the same time some of them were producing the racist idea that Africans walked around naked like animals. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 201

Categorization

• QUESTION: How did the nakedness stereotype persist so long when the commodity data contradicted it at the very point of exchange? Useful to chase the same dynamic in modern dehumanizing claims.
• CANDY: A sharply ironic 2-sentence anecdote: the very cloth they sold disproved the ‘Africans go naked’ lie they were spreading.