I recently read the book
It's the Little Things: The Everyday Interactions That Get under the Skin of Blacks and Whites by Lena Williams. In it, she said that white people with wet hair often smell like wet dogs to black people, and that black people often smell like sour milk to white people.
I have never heard this. When I lived in Memphis, almost all of my friends and coworkers were black -- we joked about interracial quirks and friction, and smell was never mentioned. I have never been reminded of sour milk by a black person's smell.
However, it seems that many people do experience this phenomenon. Why do you think someone might have a certain aroma to a person of a different race? How often does this happen? I once heard that Westerners smell bad to Asians because of all the meat in our diet, which makes sense. (Of course, I have no idea how true it is.)
