"mink" (n.) = 'a black, a Negro'?

[Wilson Gray]

In addition to dark-brown complexion, also "fuck like a mink", WRT the
stereotype of black (hyper)sexuality?

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain





On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 11:33 PM, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "mink" (n.) = 'a black, a Negro'?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Joel S. Berson wrote:
>> ...
>> "At 10Q.M. de moss spiceable brack folk ob stinkation gan show he
>> head from ebery treet and ally, like so many Mohe-choah Mink in a mud-bank ..."
>>
>> I presume "mink" here means 'a black/Negro person', from "mink
>> n.1 Â 3.a. Â ... thick glossy dark brown fur". Â And "mohe-choah" is 'mocha' (?).
>>
>> Thus not in OED draft rev. Mar. 2009. Â Nor in Chapman or
>> Wentworth/Flexner, the only two American slang dictionaries on my poor shelf.
> -
>
> Nothing on my shelf either, at a glance. But there is/was the expression
> "black as a mink", which was used early enough (at G. Books from 1815)
> and which probably accounts for the "mink" allusion. At G. Books I see a
> few 19th-century instances of 'black' men named/nicknamed "Mink"
> (?relevance).
>
> I reckon "moch[o]a" is probably right, but I'm not sure why it's used
> here, whether some mink were called "mocha" or whether it's just to say
> "black" again (but "mocha" is/was less dark than "black", right?). My
> OED shows a "mocha" referring to the color of a cat (?relevance).
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>
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