"looks kind cloth-colored" - silky white, to be precise.

Interesting review, Azizi. The views of Snowden and the reviewer are consistent with my own impressions from my unsystematic, unscholarly reading. What we think of as 'classic' racism today was a product of 19th century thinking and politics. Not to say that racial stereotypes were non-existent previously, but that they didn't carry nearly the same weight ...