stumped

I started reading Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X Kendi, but I didn't get very far into it. The first section of the book is about Cotton Mather and the Salem witch trials, which to me is fascinating. So, I was kind of disappointed when one of his main points was about how a number of witnesses and accused in the witch trials referred to a 'black man' who presided over black masses. 

Kendi wants to argue that that is an example of racism....that the 'black man' was associated with evil in the minds of the 17th century New England citizens. But I think that's obviously a mistake. What the witnesses were describing was not what we would call a black man. They didn't use that term in the 17th century. When they talked about a 'black man', they weren't referring to someone with dark skin, they were talking about someone who was literally black - not brown or tan or with a different skin color....so they were talking about some kind of demon or even Satan himself. 

We could 'steel man' Kendi's argument by asking why evil is associated with blackness, but it seemed to me that that's not what Kendi is getting at in that first part of his book. He wanted to use the 'black man' that the witch trial witnesses referred to, as an example of racism and I don't think it was racism.....they were not referring to what we would regard as a black man, they were referring to some kind of literally pitch black being who was only a man in appearance.