What did the word originally mean?

Anti-Black racism. Every citation Wiktionary records before the twentieth century is about race: John Wesley Thomas in 1867 attacking a magazine for classing Black people with animals, Rufus Perry in 1893 quoting Edward Wilmot Blyden, The Medical News in 1903, Israel Zangwill in 1921. None of them is about a colour.

Why did Blyden prefer it to colorphobia?

Because it is more precise, and he said so. Writing from Liberia he called the cure for American colorphobia, or more accurately melanophobia, a matter for the heart of Africa. Colorphobia names an aversion to colour in the abstract; melanophobia names the particular thing being feared.

How old is the word compared with the others?

Older than all of them. Melanophobia is attested from 1867, judeophobia from 1882, homophobia from the 1960s, and islamophobia is described as an imitation of homophobia. The habit of borrowing the suffix to name a prejudice was already running in 1867, and this is the word it produced first.

Is the colour phobia a diagnosis?

No, and the Cleveland Clinic says so on the page that defines it. Somebody with an extreme fear of the colour would be diagnosed with a specific phobia, and the object would be named.

What do people with it actually fear?

On the evidence of what accompanies it, the night. The phobias listed as commonly co-occurring are fear of the dark, of the moon, of being alone, of Halloween, of death and of colours generally. Every one belongs to the same setting, which suggests the colour is a proxy for it.

Fear of the Colour Black (Melanophobia): Meaning & Symptoms

Fear of the Colour Black

Melanophobia

Melanophobia is now defined by health publishers as a fear of the colour black, and for its first century in print it meant something else entirely: it was one of the earliest English words for anti-Black racism. Both meanings are in print and they do not acknowledge each other.

What the early citations are about

The earliest use Wiktionary records is from 1867, in a poem collection by John Wesley Thomas attacking Blackwood's Magazine for articles that classed Black people with monkeys and gorillas and for invective against the anti-slavery party. Thomas calls these the most melancholy instances of melanophobia he knows.

Rufus Perry's book on the descendants of Ham, published in 1893, uses the word twice and attributes it to Edward Wilmot Blyden, quoting him writing from Liberia: the cure for American colorphobia, or more accurately melanophobia, is in the heart of Africa. Blyden's parenthesis is a deliberate correction. Colorphobia names a fear of colour in the abstract; melanophobia names the specific thing, and he preferred the specific word.

The Medical News in 1903 discusses the medical aspects of melanophobia and complains that editorials across the country have not yet examined what it calls the race problem from a biological, ethnological or medical standpoint. Israel Zangwill uses the word in an afterword published in 1921.

Four citations across fifty-four years, and not one of them is about a colour.

Why the word predates its family

That 1867 date is worth holding against the other dates in this catalogue. Judeophobia was coined in 1882 and Homophobia in the 1960s, and Islamophobia is described as a copycat of homophobia, which may itself copy hydrophobia. Melanophobia predates the lot.

So the pattern that produced homophobia, Biphobia, Transphobia and islamophobia, a suffix borrowed to name a prejudice, was already running in 1867 and produced this word first. The word that opened the sequence is the one that has since been redefined out of it.

What melanophobia means now

The Cleveland Clinic's page, last reviewed in February 2022, defines melanophobia as an unhealthy fear of the colour black or of dark colours, treats it as a specific phobia and notes that it is not an official medical diagnosis: a person extremely afraid of black would be diagnosed with a specific phobia, with the object named.

It lists the phobias that commonly accompany it, and the list is the clearest indication of what the modern sense is actually about:

Every one of those is a night-time association. The colour is standing in for what the colour is the colour of.

The page is careful about the distinction the catalogue keeps returning to. Being uncomfortable around something is not a phobia; what makes it one is that the reaction worsens despite efforts to avoid it and takes a toll on the person's life.

Why the senses never meet

Nothing in the modern health-publishing usage acknowledges the older one. A reader who searches the word today finds a colour phobia with a symptom list and a treatment recommendation, and no indication that the term spent its first century describing something a health publisher would not want to be associated with.

The catalogue records both because the drift is the interesting part. A word coined by nineteenth-century abolitionists and by Blyden to name a specific prejudice precisely has been taken over by content about a colour, and the takeover happened without an argument, because nobody was using the original for long enough to defend it.

Common questions

Questions about Melanophobia

What did the word originally mean?: Anti-Black racism. Every citation Wiktionary records before the twentieth century is about race: John Wesley Thomas in 1867 attacking a magazine for classing Black people with animals, Rufus Perry in 1893 quoting Edward Wilmot Blyden, The Medical News in 1903, Israel Zangwill in 1921. None of them is about a colour.
Why did Blyden prefer it to colorphobia?: Because it is more precise, and he said so. Writing from Liberia he called the cure for American colorphobia, or more accurately melanophobia, a matter for the heart of Africa. Colorphobia names an aversion to colour in the abstract; melanophobia names the particular thing being feared.
How old is the word compared with the others?: Older than all of them. Melanophobia is attested from 1867, judeophobia from 1882, homophobia from the 1960s, and islamophobia is described as an imitation of homophobia. The habit of borrowing the suffix to name a prejudice was already running in 1867, and this is the word it produced first.
Is the colour phobia a diagnosis?: No, and the Cleveland Clinic says so on the page that defines it. Somebody with an extreme fear of the colour would be diagnosed with a specific phobia, and the object would be named.
What do people with it actually fear?: On the evidence of what accompanies it, the night. The phobias listed as commonly co-occurring are fear of the dark, of the moon, of being alone, of Halloween, of death and of colours generally. Every one belongs to the same setting, which suggests the colour is a proxy for it.

Added 2026-08-24 · Revised 2026-08-26