Al Capone: From "Dark" to "Fair"

Recently I posted about how fairly light-skinned Italian criminals were often falsely stereotyped as "dark" or "swarthy" in the media. Because Al Capone is so famous, a lot of his rap sheets and wanted posters are uploaded online, and I was surprised to find that they don't all describe him the same way.

His hair is always Dark Brown or Black, and on his wanted poster it was assumed that his eyes would be Brown, but on his rap sheets they're described as either Blue, Grey or Green (his relatives have said that they were blue). But his complexion ranges from Dark all the way to Fair:

Dark

Dark Ruddy

Medium Dark

Medium Fair

Fair

Of course, this inconsistency doesn't reflect any kind of "questionable racial status" for Italians because, first of all, complexion and color (i.e. race) are two different things, and whenever a file mentions Capone's color, it's always White:

White

White

White

And second of all, this kind of thing wasn't limited to Italians and other "ethnics". I also found that criminals of Northern European descent were not always described as stereotypically Fair, but often also as Medium and even Dark:

John Dillinger: Medium

Willie Sutton: Medium Dark

Fred Barker: Dark

Harvey Bailey: Dark

Homer Van Meter: Dark

"Dark" and "Swarthy" Italians Are Still Light

We've seen how olive skin is misunderstood by people to mean "tan" or "non-white", now let's look at the same thing with words like "dark" and "swarthy" used to describe the complexions of Europeans. Applied mostly (but not exclusively) to Southern Europeans, people treat them as evidence against "whiteness", but they're really just exaggerations of reality, like in this passage from White on Arrival about how Italian gangsters were portrayed in the media:

Al Capone was constantly portrayed in books, magazine articles, pulps, and movies as having a "dark" or "swarthy" complexion. When he appeared in court in 1929 in Philadelphia on charges of having concealed a weapon, the Chicago Daily News noticed that his "face, which is rather dark, assumed a dull reddish hue." No one emphasized Italians' dark features more than popular writer and former newsman Walter Burns. In his book, The One-Way Ride, Johnny Torrio was "a slight, dapper, dark young man"; gunmen John Scalise and Albert Anselmi had "dark faces"; the Genna brothers were "swarthy, black haired, black eyed, looked not unlike Arabs, and probably had in their ancestral strain a strong dash of Saracenic [North African] blood".

From these descriptions you'd probably picture really dark Saudi Arabians or maybe even mixed-race Berbers, but here's what those people actually looked like (the rare mugshot of Capone has been skillfully colorized to show his blue eyes):

Al Capone

Genna Brothers

Johnny Torrio

John Scalise and Albert Anselmi

This kind of exaggeration is similar to English ideas about the so-called "Black Irish". They're really just white people from the British Isles (not just Ireland) who have dark hair and eyes and a Mediterranean appearance — like Colin Farrell, Catherine Zeta Jones, Sean Connery, Mr. Bean, Russell Brand and many others — but old school Nordicists used to claim that part of the Celtic physiognomy was "black-tinted skin".

Benjamin Franklin was even more extreme, basically lumping all whites who weren't Anglo-Saxon into a "swarthy" group with non-whites, including some who are probably lighter than English people:

All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth.

So the lesson is to not take descriptions like that literally or as meaning something "non-white". Europeans (including Southern Europeans) actually have the lightest untanned skin in the world, so even when they're "dark" or "swarthy", they're still lighter than everyone else.

Related: Al Capone: From "Dark" to "Fair"

Clinal Differences in Pigmentation

People often mention the fact that Southern Italians are darker than Northern Italians like it proves something about "racial differences" in Italy, but clinal north-south or east-west differences in pigmentation (and other traits) are normal and can be seen in other European countries too, like Germany, France and the British Isles:

Italy

Germany

France

British Isles

Looking at Europe as a whole, the differences within Italy are small compared to differences between Italy and North-Central Europe:


This can also be seen within the border nation of Switzerland, between the Italian-speaking south and the German-speaking parts in the north:


Despite stereotypes of Northern Italians looking "Germanic" or "Celtic" compared to "dark" Southerners, and dumb movies claiming that they all have blond hair and blue eyes, people with that combination are only ~3-6% of the population in the North, compared to ~1-3% in the South, and red hair is <1% (~0.3-0.9) everywhere:

Blond Hair and Blue Eyes

Red Hair (per 1000 people)

You can see in the large random samples from all regions here and here that most Italians are in the medium pigmentation range. And you can see how similar they all are on average in these facial composites.

Pigmentation Through Roman History

The recent study on Ancient Roman DNA gives frequencies over time for some alleles of functional importance (eye and skin color). We know that Mesolithic hunters had blue eyes and dark skin while Neolithic farmers had brown eyes and light skin, which combined and adapted to make the European phenotypes of today.

But contrary to what Nordicists claim about Romans going from "Northern European" to "Middle Eastern", blue eyes and light skin (and also lactase persistence) have increased steadily since at least the Iron Age, and today they show the same levels as other Modern Europeans (Spanish, British or Finnish).

Olive Skin and Other Undertones

Many people think "olive" is a skin color like white, black or brown and refers to a separate or "mixed" ethnicity with some kind of "tan" complexion, usually in the Mediterranean region. But it's actually just one of several skin undertones that are found in all races, light and dark. The 4 undertones are: Cool (blue/pink), Neutral (yellow/beige), Olive (green/gray) and Warm (red/gold). And Southern Europe, including Italy, has the same variation as anywhere else in Europe or the world.

Here's what an untanned Italian woman would look like with each undertone:


And here are some other examples of Italians with different undertones:


You can see more, including some very tanned individuals, in these random samples of Big Brother and talent show contestants.

Hair Dye and Wigs in Ancient Rome

When Nordicists aren't trying to claim Ancient Romans as their own, they say that the Romans dyed their hair blonde, or wore blonde wigs made from Germanic hair, because they envied the physical and moral attributes of "superior" Northern Europeans. But that narcissistic fantasy couldn't be further from the truth. Hair coloring was indeed popular in ancient Roman society (as it also is in modern British society), but its history, functions and significance were much more complicated.

In her reference book Encyclopedia of Hair, Victoria Sherrow explains that blonde hair in Rome was linked with prostitution at first, and obtained from slaves:

In ancient Rome, blond hair was initially considered to be a symbol of a prostitute, and these women were required to bleach their hair blond or wear blond wigs. After slave girls were acquired from Scandinavia and Germany, noblewomen began to wear more wigs made from their hair, and the stigma attached to blond hair diminished. Women also began dying their hair lighter shades using infusions made from saffron flowers. Unfortunately, some dyes and bleaches caused such severe damage to the hair that people resorted to wearing wigs. People also wore false hairpieces to augment their own hair or create special effects.

Popular anthropologist Desmond Morris describes in an amusing passage how blonde hair lost its prostitution stigma, how and why it gained in popularity, and what it represented (hint: not high morals):

Roman prostitutes were carefully organized. They were licensed, taxed, and actually required by law to wear blonde hair. The third wife of the Emperor Claudius, the wild nymphomaniac Messalina, was so excited by the idea of sudden, brutal sex with strangers that she would sneak out at night clad in a whore's wig and prowl the city. So violent was her lovemaking that it is rumoured she frequently dislodged her blonde hairpiece, returning to the royal precincts in all too recognizable condition.

Other Roman ladies of fashion were soon imitating her, and the lawmakers were impotent to stem the trend. Their blonde-wig-whoring law was ruined, but the element of wickedness and abandon by now associated with blondness was to survive down the centuries, repeatedly re-surfacing as an opposing strand in contrast to the image of fair-haired virginal innocence.

Prior to that (and probably long after as well), Romans were much more likely to use dark colored dyes, often to hide gray hair and restore their natural color. Victoria Sherrow explains again:

Hair dyes were popular in ancient Rome, and historians have found more than 100 different recipes that the Romans used for bleaching or dying hair. Early Romans preferred dark hair, and at one time, blond hair was the mark of a prostitute. Light hair became fashionable after Greek culture reached Italy and the Roman legionnaires began bringing back fair-haired slaves from Gaul. Women, and some men, applied bleaching agents to their hair and then exposed it to the sun to achieve a golden or red color. Wealthier people could afford to sprinkle actual gold dust on their hair to create a blond look, as did the ancient Phoenicians. Another way to achieve a lighter shade was to cover the hair with flower pollen and the crushed petals of yellow-colored flowers. When harsh bleaching agents caused hair loss, Roman women resorted to wigs made from the hair of blond slaves.

To color gray hair, the Romans used a mixture made from ashes, boiled walnut shells, and earthworms. Another recipe for dark hair dye combined boiled walnut shells, charred eggs, leeks, leeches, and other ingredients. They also discovered that lead-coated combs dipped in vinegar would leave a dark residue on the hair. The color deepened over time as repeated use of a comb left more lead salts on the hair.

Indeed, according to archaeologist Elizabeth Bartman, Romans also imported black hair from India, while their use of blonde hair had political significance. Unlike the Indian hair, which was acquired through trade, Germanic hair became a symbol of Rome's subjugation of barbarians:

Ample literary sources document women's (as well as men's) use of wigs and hairpieces, and the extensive vocabulary they employ suggests a wide range of options. Capillamentum, corymbium, galerum and τρίχωμα are favorite, but by no means the only, terms attested. Most wigs in antiquity were made of human hair and fashioned with a level of beauty and craftsmanship largely unobtainable today. (In modern times synthetic hair has replaced natural human hair in all but the most expensive wigs.) Although no Roman wigs have survived, evidence from pharaonic Egypt attests to the high quality of ancient hairpieces. The blond hair of Germans and jet black of Indians was preferred for artificial attachments, but it is unclear whether their desirability stemmed from their color or texture. While black Indian hair, documented in a late source, was no doubt obtained through trade, the blond hair of Germans was one of the spoils of war, at least in the early Imperial period. Both Ovid and Martial refer to "captured" hair (captivos crines), making an explicit link between the commodification of hair and Roman power.

Bartman also stresses the artificiality and extravagance of popular hairstyles, which would often combine light and dark shades. This indicates an ornamental function rather than an attempt to look like a natural Northern European blonde — something that would have been looked down on:

Notwithstanding its implications of Roman conquest, a blond braid interwoven into the dark tresses of a Mediterranean crown presumably announced the fictive nature of the coiffure rather emphatically. This unabashed flaunting of artificial locks contrasts with the generally negative image of wig wearing conveyed by many of the literary sources.

...Roman female coiffures bespeak human intervention. When looking at sculptural rendering today, we frame our discussion of cultus largely in terms of the shape and construction of Roman coiffures, but we should recall that artificial color provided by dye, bleach, or powder, and the sheen acquired by gel or pomade, also advertised the hairdressers' effort. By contrast, we today favor the so-called natural look in female hairdressing; whether styled in an Afro or Princess Diana bob, contemporary women's hair professes to be close to its natural state. [...] To the ancients, however, "natural" was a term of opprobrium, suggesting a lack of civilization and social control — a state close to beasts and barbarians. So Paola Virgili and others have appropriately linked the notion of cultus, implying refinement and civilization, to the elaborate coiffures of imperial Roman women.

References

1. Victoria Sherrow. Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006.
2. Desmond Morris. The Naked Woman: A Study of the Female Body. New York: Macmillan, 2007.
3. Elizabeth Bartman. "Hair and the Artifice of Roman Female Adornment". Am J Archaeol, 2001.