Melanism

[Bikewer]

I try to catch NPR's Science Friday each week, and yesterday's show dealt with a topic I was quite unaware of.
Ira Flatow had a playwright on who had written a play named "Relativity". Not in the Einstinian sense; this deals with a family's reaction to a belief rising out of Afrocentrism.
In this context, Melanism refers to the belief that increased quantities of melanin, not only in the skin but internally, make one a better human being. More athletic, smarter, more "sensitive", etc.
An article I found after considerable searching:

http://www.discover.com/issues/nov-94/features/theskinwerein443/

The playwright was saying that this set of beliefs is almost completely unknown outside of "black culture", but that there are pamphlets, books, and so forth available.
Sounds as if it might tie into the bizzare beliefs of Elijah Mohammed and the Nation of Islam as well.
There is indeed not much information available on the web, at least by my searching; Wikipedia had nothing, and Amazon lists no titles. Searching for "melanism" only gave me hits concerning evolution, pigmentation, and related topics.
I got the above article by searching for "melanist".
Here's the link to the Science Friday segment:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5401182

[Amapola]

The Discover article is very interesting, thanks.

I did a search on "Leonard Jeffries melanist" because your article mentioned Jeffries as a proponent of this idea, and managed to scare up a little more info. You might try those search parameters.

[Pardalis]

Melanism is absurd. It would suggest people with albinism would be stupid, wich is absolutely not true. There is no scientific reason to believe melanin affects in any way brain capacity.

[Bikewer]

The play evidently deals with the father, a true believer in the idea, and the daughter, a university-educated girl who thinks it's psuedoscientific nonsense.