"In Jobson's view, Africans came in multiple colors: tawny [brown-orange], black and 'perfectly black'. Not only were Africans not all one people, they were not yet all black." p. 11

The collective idea of blackness and the one drop rule hadn't been established nor widely adopted around the world during the 17th and mid-18th century.

"And, in Jobson's estimation, the lighter brown skin of some Africans enhanced their beauty." p. 11

The pursuit of fairer skin, adjacency to whiteness and what would inevitably become colorism was already in effect as early as the 1600s.