MELANISM, meaning a mutation that results in completely dark skin, DOES NOT EXIST IN HUMANS.
Melanin is the primary determinant of the degree of skin pigmentation and protects the body from harmful ultraviolet radiation. The same ultraviolet radiation is essential for the synthesis of vitamin D in skin, so lighter colored skin – less melanin – is an adaptation related to the prehistoric movement of humans away from EQUATORIAL regions, as there is less exposure to sunlight at higher latitudes. People from parts of Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Australia have very dark skin, but this is NOT MELANISM.
The term MELANISM has been used on Usenet, internet forums and blogs to mean an African-American social movement holding that dark-skinned humans are the original people from which those of other skin color originate. The term MELANISM has been used in this context as early as the mid-1990s and was promoted by some Afrocentrists, such as Frances Cress Welsing.
“Melanin theory” is a claim in Afrocentrism that a higher level of melanin, the primary determinant of skin color in humans, is the cause of an intellectual and physical superiority of dark-skinned people and provides them with supernatural powers. It is considered a racist and pseudoscientific theory.
According to Bernard Ortiz De Montellano of Wayne State University, “The alleged properties of melanin, mostly unsupported, irrelevant, or distortions of the scientific literature, are (…) used to justify Afrocentric assertions. One of the most common is that humans evolved as blacks in Africa, and that whites are mutants (albinos, or melanin recessives)”. The melanin hypothesis was supported by Leonard Jeffries, who according to Time magazine, believes that “melanin, the dark skin pigment, gives blacks intellectual and physical superiority over whites”.
- Ortiz de Montellano, Bernard R. (17 Dec 2006). “Afrocentric Pseudoscience: The Miseducation of African Americans”. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 775: 561–572. doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.1996.tb23174.x. Archived from the original on 5 January 2013.
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