Warning: Offensive and racist Awake! Magazine...
Really, how great are racial differences? Are they of such a degree that people of different races cannot live together as equals, and take real pleasure in one another’s company? For example, is there a big gap between the intelligence of people of various races? Or, do the races have a distinct body odor, making it objectionable for blacks and whites to live in close quarters with one another? –Awake! October 8, 1977 page 4
But still there are persistent views that hinder persons from applying this fine Scriptural counsel. A prominent one is that persons of other races than one’s own have an objectionable body odor. -Awake! October 8, 1977 page 16
In centuries past, when blacks were slaves and considered as property, whites often spoke about their body odor. In his recent book Race, John R. Baker says: “The authors of earlier centuries remarked on this subject with greater freedom than those of the present day. Thus Henry Home, in his Sketches of the History of Man, refers to the ‘rank smell’ of Negroes. In a work published in the same year (1774), The History of Jamaica, Long says that the Negroes are distinguished by their ‘bestial or fetid smell, which they all have to a greater or lesser degree.’” –Awake! October 8, 1977 page 17
I remember once pulling a crosscut saw with a young black my age in cutting down a tree. When he got hot, he really smelled! Ah! I thought, this proves what they say about blacks’ having a peculiar body odor. But I didn’t stop to consider that while I had taken a bath that day, he had very meager facilities for bathing in his humble home. Also, lack of early family training in hygiene likely diminished his incentive to take a bath often. –Awake! October 8, 1977 page 25