Thomas Jefferson,
Notes on the State of Virginia (1781)

¢ The first difference which strikes us is that of colour.  . . .  [T]he difference is fixed in nature . . . .  And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immoveable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race?