The “West” is especially sensitive to individual autonomy, perhaps uniquely so. Slavery is especially hypocritical.
My understanding, too, is that “racism” as a concept is invented along with the enlightenment.
I suspect it’s telling that the word “slave” is often translated to “servant” in the bible. Theirs, like many, was a society in which hierarchy was built into the idea of society. Our society is of free individuals, so we need special conceptual tools to justify enslaving races, or subjugating women. We invent (pseudo) scientific reasons for doing so.
All this is to say that while many other societies have slavery, and also are what we would call “racist.” But racism as a concept, as a justification for racist treatment of people, is invented by us, as i understand it.
I don’t remember what exactly we were doing in class, but one of the students gathered a bunch of the materials on his table and said, “I took everyone’s stuff. I’m a communist!”
I was just following up on the joke there. I try not to get into the technical terms since they seemed to be used in many ways even by the originators. Certainly it’s possible to have some aspects of Socialism without ruining everything.
I dunno. When I was in Africa, my sponsored child’s father had lost his job working in a mine because he and his co-workers had decided to go on strike.
Why were they striking you ask? Higher wages? They want a pension? Better health insurance?
No, no. They were striking over hard hats. Let that sink in a minute. In the 21st century people working in a mine had been denied the extraordinarily basic protective equipment of hard hats.
When the federal government owned the mine they provided basic, cheap, plastic hard hats. But they’d sold the mine to a Chinese company. At first the workers still had the old hard hats, but over time the supply ran out and the Chinese owners refused to buy more.
When asked how could the mine owners possibly justify this, the World Vision staff explained that Africans were considered subhuman, so it didn’t matter if they died from debris falling on their heads (and several workers had). They’d just hire other workers to take their place, no biggie. No different from shooting a horse that is no longer useful to you.
So no, white people are not the only ones prone to problematic racism.
And we certainly didn’t invent the caste system in India. That dates back thousands of years.
I think that “tribalism” is rooted in human genes. Our ancestors survived only because they knew how to cooperate with one another for the purpose of competing against the others. “Others” could be non-human predators, or humans who wanted the same slice of territory. Humans will sub-consciously size up a stranger as friend or foe in the first second of meeting.
I mentioned that the book includes research on how six month old children recognize race (probably any noticeable physical differences) and three year-olds show bias. I think that’s genetic.
“Racism” is tribalism when, for some reason, tribes run into humans that are distinctly different in appearance. When Europeans started traveling around the world, they ran into many different groups, and they could write, so we know what they did.
I think the Mongols invading one group after another thought they had superior “blood”. And the people being invaded thought the Mongols, who looked different, were inherently evil. I expect every time two groups collided, and they looked different, each thought the other was “not as good as us”.
on a large scale, yes. human nature leads to individuality in some at varying levels (don’t want to call it all “greed” but for some, yeah it’s greed.)
small scale communal living (think hippy-like small farms) can work where everyone has opted into it. but even they have to have a way to expel someone for not being on program (which is different from a totalitarian punishment).
Yep. Imagine that three generation farm family in a Norman Rockwell painting. They live in a “from each according …” world. Grampa can’t drive horses, but he works on the harness. Gramma sews. The five year old gathers eggs. But, Mom and Dad do most of the work. Some take more than they contribute, others less.
I view myself as a Responsible Capitalist which is probably viewed as being a Communist by folks on the right.
The examples where Communism has been imposed will clearly show that it has been a failure. However I get annoyed when folks who support critical race theory, LGBTQ rights or some other liberal cause are labelled as Communists by some right-wingers. If Communism is taught as an economic system in schools it may reduce some of this ignorance.
This may be too academic, but i don’t think this is necessarily true.
What you describe inevitable leads to what we would call racist outcomes. And maybe it leads to what we would call systemic racism.
But racism has to involve a certain kind of self consciousness. It is a set of concepts about what you are doing in addition to your actions. For example, anglo saxons weren’t happy saying the welsh and irish were of celtic descent, and as a different tribe didn’t have to be treated as well, which would have been tribalism. Instead, they came up with pseudoscientific reasons based on universal principles that justified them treating the irish and welsh worse. It is conceptually distinct.
Maybe you’re saying that “racism” as an “ism” is a type of thinking that rationalizes dominating, killing, enslaving, (or even fighting against long odds that favor) the other group based on a claim of natural superiority/inferiority? If so, I agree.
But, I don’t think it requires psuedo science. In most of history, it was simply religion. “God made us superior”, no science required. Still racism.
Not necessarily pseudo science, but some kind of appeal to universal principles grounded in experience and reason. It seems like otherwise it is just tribalism.
I don’t think this is true, at least not always.
Christianity in western europe worked against tribalism, for example. There were romans, goths, angles, saxons, franks, irish, etc., who were unified under a single christendom.
Islam is also very anti tribal historically, although i know much less about it.
This is an important distinction. Framing the argument as an American.
With regards to the endowed unalienable Rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness “all men are created equal.” (Since we are discussing racism I will set aside the obvious misogyny in that statement and focus on race.) Slavery (and imperialism) can only be justified if you consider the slave not a man, not an equal. Racism as a concept, as a “science,” as a principle is the justification to avoid the hypocrisy of the enlightened west.
Now consider with regards to the endowed unalienable Rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness all men are not created equal. Without equality there is no need for racism as a principle. (It’s already baked in so to speak) Your slavery and imperialism may very well be racist, and there are many examples of such, but they don’t have to be. Whatever your society/culture uses as a stratification of humanity will work.
I believe all humans are created equal. So the racism and misogyny of my society, and other societies founded on individualism are direct assaults on my principles. Simply put the hypocrite is worse than the nonbeliever.
But, spreading Christianity could be used as an excuse for wars against “pagans”.
I think that when humans fight against other humans, they will use any excuse that is handy, or no excuse at all. Greater differences in physical appearance make it easier for our innate tribalism to have free play. It may be to say that the other is not really as “human” as us. Or, maybe our ability to win must show that God favors us. Or, that “science” shows we are superior.
It has been going on as long as humans have bumped into other humans. Nearby tribes probably used tattoos or paint or hair to cement their belonging to this tribe but definitely not that tribe. Humans became very sensitive to these visual signals, quick recognition could be the difference between living and dying. Then, they moved around and ran into others who are naturally quite different and the difference is so striking they had to wonder if these others are really as “human” as us.
I’ve read that the first Irish were dark skinned, blue eyed hunter gatherers. Eventually, lighter skinned early farmers arrived. In short order, the original group disappeared and there isn’t any significant DNA mixing. I expect that if we could listen to these two groups talk among themselves, we’d hear lots of “racist” conversation.
I’m not sure that’s true. We may be projecting ourselves onto them.
Christianity definitely contributed to wars against the non christian’s. But historically, it’s universality was directly opposed to the literal pagan tribalism. This is part of why it was a good fit for constantine, as i understand it, who wanted to take control from the elite of the historically more independent, more tribal, city states. But this same universality can of course lead to war, since eventually it turned from “anybody can be christian” to “everybody should be christian.”
Islam, too, allowed mohammed and others to overcome literal arab tribalism.
The reason i’m not sure about your statement concerning the irish is that i’ve read the entire idea of the “saxons”, or the “irish”, etc, were actually invented, as it were, after the introduction of christianity. As part of their conversion, these groups of people told stories about themselves as a chosen people in parallel with the jews, and created the groups that 1000 years later served as the foundation for racial theories. Before that, they may really have though in terms of tribes. Maybe skin color let you identify people of the other tribe, or maybe it was other things.