General

wtf kind of sentence is this? it's confusing and broken up for no reason

It seemed to the Europeans, who believed that Caucasians were the superior race, that pigmentation, or tint, came only in one shade.

Much better.

[quote=Disrespected]> Because i'm going to come across sentences like that in my career.

I'm doing Engineering, not Elitist English.[/quote]

You still need 'dat grammar for Engineering. My High School Engineering teacher always raged when people had bad grammar in their reports.

why is that punctuated weirdly to me, like some guy trying to make exaggerated pauses to sound smart

[quote=popsicklezzz]"Pigmentation, it seemed, only came in one shade; or tint rather, as the Europeans perceived that the Caucasians were the superior race."[/quote]
You're using the semicolon incorrectly, lol.

"Pigmentation, it seemed, only came in one shade; or tint rather, as the Europeans perceived that the Caucasians were the superior race."

"Pigmentation, it seemed, only came in one shade( or tint rather) as the Europeans perceived that the Caucasians were the superior race."

The structure of your sentence seems odd, but that's probably because I didn't get to see the sentences that came before.

[quote=Disrespected]> Because i'm going to come across sentences like that in my career.

I'm doing Engineering, not Elitist English.[/quote]

Believe it or not, this is for an essay for my neurobiology course. Crazy, right?

Pigmentation seemed to only come in one shade(or tint, rather), as the Europeans perceived that the Caucasians were the superior race.

Comma after "tint"? Not sure, though.

@AnasF: I was gonna say something along these lines.

Why would you write a sentence like that?
Seems fine to me, I guess. You could replace the last comma and "as" with a ; or -.

I'm not doing your homework for you.