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What evidence is there of racism before colonialism?
Removed by modFrom what I understand the modern concept of race arose during the age of colonialism, but before that time, was there any documented accounts of racism against black people by white people?
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The problem with this question is that there were no "white" and "black" people before the modern invention of race. There are traditions of xenophobia and prejudice dating back to at least antiquity that we might recognize to varying degrees as precursors, but the idea that the peoples of Europe all share an innate quality of whiteness and are superior to the people of Africa, who all share an innate quality of blackness, did not exist. These ideas only become possible and useful with the beginnings of Transatlantic slavery and colonialism, as an ideology that underpins and justifies the project of subjugation.
The immediate forerunner of the modern invention of race made the division on religious lines, instead (Christendom vs the non-christian other). Racism had to be invented in order to justify keeping fellow Christians (converts in colonized societies) in slavery.
Didn't religion as a justification for racism start during colonialism? This thread is to question if racism has always existed throughout human history and if not the farthest back we can pin it existing.
"Racism" is just another face of the same subjugation which has been a fact of human empires since the first Lugal of Sumeria. There is labor that must occur in service of the Leviathan, so some segment will be classified the Lugal, some the Ensi, and the rest the zeks. Read this and understand the face of history.
The sort of proto-racism that existed in Europe before colonialism was strange, usually tied to religious differences, and mostly focused on climate of all things, with the idea that hot climates made people "bestial" and prone to immorality and heresy.
I thought it was the other way with pale blonds being seen as dumb brutes and ebony africans were seen as agile and intelligent.
Wasn't that Roman era stuff? Once you get to the late medieval/early modern era the prevailing idea was that warm climates were a corrupting influence, which tied into the religious conflicts with Muslims in the middle east and africa.
Race was created with the purpose of racism. Which means Race is a social construct where whites steal power by using a homogenized hierarchy.
That’s wrong.
And you’ve been told that in so many ways in this thread yet you still are clinging onto this strange idea. Why?
there were people who were racist against people who looked different than them, it's not that this concept was suddenly invented along with colonialism. it's that these biases were played upon to create a world view where white people were inherently better, and placed by God to be shephards of 'lesser races'/gifted the land of the world for white people to take over/enslavement is ok because these people aren't really people like us. these were all constructed and socially enforced and educated into people, where before they probably would have said some racist shit if they saw a black man, but more seen them as a novelty because they're different than something to be reviled and hated
More emphasis on religion I think, including petty shit like protestants vs catholics. Less contact with Africa too I assume
I don't think it's fair to say that religion is a red herring. Religion and national-identity had traveled together in Ireland for the entire period of colonization. Increasingly, religion is less relevant to the question, but certainly during the Troubles it was an element of Irish anti-colonialism.
The only time in history Catholics have been oppressed, and I mean only time, nowadays I really don't give a shit what the Irish think, they aren't oppressed like blacks and are no different than any white.
Didn't a Greek philosopher compare African skin to shit? Its ignorant to assume people on the Mediterranean didn't have regular encounters with black people and that there was policies against them we may or may not know about.
From what I understand, the ancient world had some generalized xenophobia towards people outside their own language/culture, but it wasn’t focused on white/black and hierarchies based on skin color like what came with European colonialism.
Related, I found this on Wikipedia which I think is an accurate summary:
The term "Aethiop" carried no social implications.[4] There was no such thing as a black community; immigrants from south of the Sahara were few and from disparate ethnic communities. The immigrants would have been separated from each other in households of other people, and if they had descendants these would have blended within very few generations into the local population.[4] While slaves formed a large minority of the population and slavery was a deeply stigmatized social status, the great majority of slaves were from European and Mediterranean populations; inherited physical characteristics were not relevant to slave status.[4][5] Black people were not excluded from any profession, and no stigma or bias against mixed race relationships is recorded in Antiquity.[6]
So, yeah, racism as we know it today didn’t really exist back then.
I don't know, it's very possible. Greeks took fellow Greeks as slaves, so I don't think "slave" and "black" had the same overlap then. It's also possible "shit" got lost in translation (shit - dirt - soil - earth - brown perhaps). Then there's the whole "deciding whether Egyptians were black" thing and I don't think any of that is very useful or interesting. While they had good boats, getting below the Sahara would be more difficult in any case.
Medieval Arabs, who considered themselves white, Africans black, and Europeans red, had some distinctly negative opinions of black people. This was backed up by imperialism and slave trade. We get quotes like this one from al-Abshibi (CW Racism): "Is there anything more vile than black slaves, of less good and more evil than they? [...some ranting about mulattos later...] It is said that when the [black] slave is sated, he fornicates, when he is hungry, he steals."
Things like the "one drop" rule date back to expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian peninsula.
Earlier in colonialism, there's an absolutely wild assortment of different attempts at justifying racial superiority. This wiki page has over a dozen white dudes trying to come up with a system for explaining and classifying races, and they all disagree on what races there are and why, except that definitely white people are the best and black people are the worst. Races as we know them today didn't really take hold until the racists got their hands on Darwin's work.
I think looking at race as a purely colonial concept is racist in of itself, white people have always been racist, even in cultures that weren't truly white like the arabs or indians the lighter skinned people always ruled the darker skinned people. Why though?
truly white
This is not a thing. There is no "true white". White is just the line drawn between "people worthy of the barest esteem" and "subhumans".
Right but they didn't all have a concept of race. For instance, Ancient Greeks and Romans though that Northern Africa were civilized, but too prone to tyranny. On the other hand Germans and other Europeans were barbarians who enjoyed too much freedom from civilization. There were prejudices, but skin color didn't explicitly tie into it as much as culture and religion.
Language is also very important here as well, but I suppose that could be considered cultural. If I recall correctly, the Greeks used the term "barbarian" to denote any non-Greek-speaking peoples.
The idea of "Me and people like me" > "People not like me" isn't modern, the exact mechanisms of modern racism might not have been realized yet but it certainly existed
Like what's the earliest can we document a white person being racist against black people?
Probably way before good documentation even exists lol.
It's also useful to note the idea of "White people" and "Black people" are kinda modern as well. These groups weren't the same in the past.
I think the problem is ancient society didn't have a meta understating of identity like we do so documenting their true beliefs on the matter is harder. That doesn't mean racism didn't exist, we need to press the fact that white people throughout all of human history have been racist.
I recently read that when Alexander the Great conquered his empire, former city states in Greece had to pay for the war. Because this was quite costly, even the bourgeoisie of these city states lived through relative hardship. To not lose their support, Alexander called the Greek "master race", implying that people of other cultures, especially those conquered and enslaved, were somehow inferior. That's exactly the kind of racism that existed during colonialism.
And I think the race part was a lot more tied to the language too, right? I don't think they cared too much about melanin content if you spoke perfect Greek and knew all the customs and worshiped the correct pantheon etc.
Christman had a good point about race which I'm sure he cribbed from someone else, that melanin content of skin got attached to race because of American slavery. They tried having white slaves and American Indian slaves, but they could run away and just get accepted into another town. But if you were black, it marked you in the new world as a slave. Even if you ran somewhere else everyone knew, because of your skin, you were a slave.
And I think the race part was a lot more tied to the language too, right? I don’t think they cared too much about melanin content if you spoke perfect Greek and knew all the customs and worshiped the correct pantheon etc.
Even today you can tell European nationals apart by their looks. I guess ancient racism wasn't reduced to skin tones, but I doubt it was solely about language/culture.
Oh I agree I bet they could guess someone wasn't born in Greece, but I think since borders were pretty fuzzy then and people mixed much more freely, I bet people were used to seeing a bunch of differences but then being like "oh shit, I thought you were Scythian at first! How's it hanging?" after hearing them speak Greek. It's so weird from our pov because race is such an important thing after centuries of colonialism, I'm trying to wrap my head around a time when borders and nations didn't have strong borders, there was no history of racialized slavery, etc.
Apparently, Aristotle thought most barbarians had slave-souls and slave-bodies, but they didn't always match. So presumably, regular ancient people probably could tell someone was a non-Greek probably by some phenotypical differences but that non-Greek status was erased if they had Greek culture and language.
I would go to whatever bathhouse they molested the little boys in and blow it up. Imagine human progress without anymore Greek philosopher pedos.
Is there any examples of Greeks discriminating against other Greeks because they were black? I mean we talk about racism as this colonial concept but it must have deeper roots than that, white people must be inherently racist or else racism would not exist.
I don't think so for ancient Greeks, I don't think they were against black people anymore than barbarians (i.e. non-Greeks) in general. I know Romans didn't think black people were a big deal, for sure. In fact, if you asked Romans or Ancient Greeks what black people were, they'd probably have no idea what you're talking about - they'd be like: "Berbers and Egyptians etc aren't the same, what are you talking about?" Or ask them what white people were, or tell them that the Greeks, Parthians, Etruscans, Celts, Germanii, etc. were all one race they'd think you were crazy.
If you consider Racism, as we understand it and in particular about black people, under Dialectical Materialism we must consider what socio-economic forces drove the development of Racism. I think looking into the historical record it's pretty clear that Racism didn't start until the slave trade in the New World. That doesn't mean people were all singing kumbaya, they just had a different conceptions that they split on. Like, for medieval or renaissance people, religion was way more important than ethnicity or even language. I know the medieval people thought quite highly of a mythical figure called "Prester John" whowas supposed to live in Africa and have a highly developed kingdom that was considered super good.
And what color did europeans think prester john was? Racism is internalized much like gender roles are, and this internalization exists entirely within white people, it has always existed even before colonialism put a name towards it, to claim that racism began during colonialism is to deny the existence of white and black people itself. Black people exist, they are a culture and a race and in need of preservation and whites have always sought the destruction of blacks. I recommend you read the works of Wallace Fard Muhammad to educate yourself on history of white people pre-colonialization.
I recommend you read the works of Wallace Fard Muhammad to educate yourself on history of white people pre-colonialization.
Is this a bit?
The Indians had very little contact with Europeans right? So the light skinned population in India arose separately from the one in Europe? Why are white people predispositioned towards racism?
the direct antecedents of colonial racial theory were proto-colonial projects in Iberia & Ireland, wherein religious affiliation started to be imagined as an innate trait that couldn't actually be changed & this gets subbed into skin colors/places of origin/genealogy
the immediate cause is was material; Ireland & Grenada were places conquered & the people conquering wanted to justify as-complete-as-possible dispossession & harsh laws to efficiently extract as much wealth as possible. they systematically denied rights to catholic (in ireland), muslim, & jewish people irregardless of individuals converting to the religion of the conquerors.
how english settlers treated native americans & africans they'd enslave was an extension of the way they treated irish people, with new systems for emerging capitalism (slavery-->irish weren't slaves simply because the method of production was still feudal).
The colonization of Ireland may have been a model for future colonization projects but there is one key difference between what happened in Ireland than in India or America. The Irish were white, it doesn't matter if the racial scientists of the time proclaimed that the Irish were inferior to africans, in practice the Irish were treated better than any black person enslaved into chattel slavery. Oppression between whites has always been softer than white oppression of blacks, white and light skinned people throughout history have always been the oppressors no exception, they always own the most land, hold the prestigious positions, and are seen as the leaders. Black people do not think in terms of race unless forced to, whites do it naturally.
Before colonialism, pretty sure there was so little contact between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa that there probably wasn't much opportunity for racism as we know it to exist.
But I like what someone else said, that hatred and feels of supremacy towards people who look different probably goes back thousands of years, today's racism is just another iteration of that.
The natives are black, the whites in north africa are the result of thousands of years of proto colonialist and actual colonialist invaders and are a minority.
Amazigh people would not be considered black. They were part of the Mediterranean world for millennia, like Greeks and Phoenicians and Iberians and Armenians.
check out this Age of Napoleon bonus episode I thought it did a good job of explaining this
https://player.fm/series/the-age-of-napoleon-podcast-2139259/bonus-episode
Roma aren't black though, are they? Also they arrived in Europe in the twelfths century and supposedly weren't treated much worse that everyone else in proceeding two centuries before colonialism.
