the day we published the results of the Human Genome Project, which proved we were 99.9% Genetically identical, despite our most superficial differences.

"All human beings are 99.9 percent identical in their genetic makeup." Human Genome Project


https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Genetics-vs-Genomics

The fact that racism is alive and well 20 years later, is all the evidence we need to conclude that racists are delusional, despite all the DNA evidence proving we are 99.9% genetically identical.

The definition of delusion: Maintaining erroneous beliefs, despite superior evidence to the contrary.

Racial superiority over somebody who's only, at most, 1/10th of 1% genetically different from you is an erroneous belief.
We should celebrate that 0.1% genetic diversity because without it, the first virus that killed one of us, would have killed all of us.

Seems like everyone needs someone to look down on. If not for "race" then for something else.

Agreed. All that the 99.9% figure does is teaches us again that humans are not rational animals.

But we already knew that.

Man is a rationalizing animal.

in b 4 ~ racism is an atheistic construct ~



ziller's bible sez we are all one race ~




in b 4 ~ in b 4 ~




brb ~

ziller Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ziller's bible sez we are all one race ~


But divided along religious lines. Chosen People vs. the rest of the world. Disciples vs. the rest of the world.

Trolling ?

Well, I guess there is a difference between racial genocide and ethnic genocide and the Bible only talks about exterminating entire "nations;" also that a lot of the stories in the OT are completely fabricated. But if you take the Bible at face value, the notion that God doesn't endorse racist/ethnic slaughter would probably come as a surprise to the Canaanites, the Amalekites, the Philistines, and some others.

So there's that.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Well, I guess there is a difference between racial
> genocide and ethnic genocide and the Bible only
> talks about exterminating entire "nations;" also
> that a lot of the stories in the OT are completely
> fabricated. But if you take the Bible at face
> value, the notion that God doesn't endorse
> racist/ethnic slaughter would probably come as a
> surprise to the Canaanites, the Amalekites, the
> Philistines, and some others.
>
> So there's that.

"Race" is obviously a flawed concept.
So is "Nation". So is "Tribe".

With animals we use the term, "Breed" at least with domesticated animals or 'sub-species' with wild ones.
Take for example dogs, a chihuahua looks a hell of a lot different from a St. Bernard, but you can reliably produce a fertile offspring that will be an ugly mid size version.
With Wolves and Coyotes are different "sub-species" of Canines. Meaning they can interbreed but just choose not to do so, for whatever reason, they just prefer their own kind.

I suppose "Breed" is problematic, as is "Sub-species" if applied to humans, since we're all supposed to be equal and all. But a 'sub-species' is not necessarily 'superior or inferior' to another sub-species. I mean, is a wolf superior to a coyote? Is a St. Bernard 'superior' to a Chihuahau? Depends upon what criteria you use to evaluate one or the other. Either Breed can win "Best in Show" at a Dog Show, but which breed is better at say, obedience, or herding sheep or rescuing people stuck in the snow, or being a lap dog?

My point is that the us/them dichotomy is present in the Bible in spades. "Nation" in the OT sense of the term was effectively race, and God ordered the eradication of several nations. The gospels go from blaming the Romans for Jesus's death to blaming the Jews, who are cursed as a people despite a genetic identity between Christians and Jews that they all originally recognized. In these cases ethnicity/nationality/race was invented to justify the maltreatment of outsiders as subhuman.

Once again, consanguinity--because with the Canaanites and the Jews/Christians that was recognized even if they did not understand genetics--didn't cause people to treat each other better. To the contrary, since the insider group wanted to differentiate itself from its otherwise indistinguishable neighbors and relatives, relatedness required the creation of barriers.

That is how Jewish Christians, and later European Christians, learned to treat Jewish Jews as a different "race." As someone once said, "I am come to bring a sword."

so should have crime, disease, car accident deaths & injuries, industrial injuries, hunger & housing shortages.

Yes, life's sometimes a bitch.

that "should" contingent upon humans being rational creatures. (Not in theoretical terms -- but rather in actuality.)


Is that the case?

So ”genomeacly” speaking, all dogs are alike?

That would mean the difference between a cuchi-cuchi dog and a momma-effing pitbull is one tenth of one percent!

I think people notice ths one-tenth of a percent differences and will act on it when choosing whom to 'rescue'...

But then I can't really comment...I became a cat lover on 9/11.

. . . But
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8ZU04U-xAo
Does it depend on the cat?

And what about Schrödinger?

As Mormonism has demonstrated, culture is the problem.

Genetically, humans have half the number of genes as a sea urchin.

bradley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As Mormonism has demonstrated, culture is the
> problem.
>
> Genetically, humans have half the number of genes
> as a sea urchin.

I read we are 50% genetically identical to a banana plant.
To me that's great news.
We are far more closely related to chimps and bonobos than they or we are to gorillas. Our 2 branches split off millions of years ago. 3 million years ago were the first Humans, Homo's, Austrlopiticus Afrikanis, an African.
So knowing this, should lead us to feel more like kin, because we are. Chimps and bonobos are more akin to humans than they are to the other great apes. We really ought to be treating them like kin, more kindly, instead of wiping out their territory and murdering them for bush meat. This is exactly what leads to serious diseases like ebola and aids jumping species to closely related species.

Humans evolved to forage and hunt in small groups of related people: extended families, kinship groups, perhaps small clans. That is the extent to which consanguinity is naturally meaningful. Knowing that the neighboring tribe, the Hutus next door, the Palestinians over the hill, are genetically related has rarely or ever resulted in a change of behavior towards them.

You are arguing against evolution.

It won't go away.
Japanese are superior - just ask them.
Chinese are superior - just ask them.
Indians are superior - just ask them.

And on it goes.

Color, religion, groups, nations and whatever - it won't go away.

JoeSmith666 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It won't go away.
> Japanese are superior - just ask them.
> Chinese are superior - just ask them.
> Indians are superior - just ask them.
>
> And on it goes.
>
> Color, religion, groups, nations and whatever - it
> won't go away.

India has an entire caste system which, as bad as that seems to us, works to keep them from killing each other, despite the fact there are people of every different nationality, tribe, caste living on top of on another.

Diversity? Who wants that? Adversity? That's what they teach at the University.

Racism should have never begun to begin with.

I'm going to outrun it if it's really a race, maybe disappear without a trace, or do an about face, if I need to save face. Or perhaps I'll erase!

Some people don't care if other people are different. Others make a big deal of it, making the differences is even more outrageous.

"Adversity? That's what they teach at the University." ...
Your bullshit strawman.

moremany Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Diversity? Who wants that? Adversity? That's what
> they teach at the University.
>
> Racism should have never begun to begin with.

I'm pretty sure racism is deeply ingrained in us and it's a lot like competing chimpanzee groups taking over each other's territory (or any other group for that matter). The first thing they do is murder all the males and babies and kidnap the adult females to use to procreate. We're not much different, unfortunately. We've done the same thing to native tribes every time we've gone in a 'settled' a continent. First we brought them our religion and white Male God, and if they didn't accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, then we killed/enslaved/raped them. How are we any different from Chimpanzee behavior?

> I'm going to outrun it if it's really a race,
> maybe disappear without a trace, or do an about
> face, if I need to save face. Or perhaps I'll
> erase!
>
> Some people don't care if other people are
> different. Others make a big deal of it, making
> the differences is even more outrageous.

That's the problem. Some people (a lot of them these days) don't care about 'others'. They have a serious, perhaps fatal, lack of empathy because they only care about their own kin, their own kind, people who look/sound/act like them and screw everybody who doesn't.

This is what leads to the homeless crisis all across our country, especially on the West Coast. People just don't care about 'others'. Here in Seattle, where 2 of the richest men in the world operate their thriving businesses, we have homeless camps all over. Everywhere there's a spot under a highway, or in the woods, or alongside the road, there are tents. Any patch of grass, any park, all filled with homeless. Rents are ridiculously high due to these huge companies that drive the cost of real estate through the roof, and the people who used to live in that run down 3 story apartment, now live out on the sidewalk because it got redeveloped into a 30 story condo project and a studio starts out a $1 million.
Jeff Bezos could take all of the money he's earned in the past 6 months off of Covid pandemic and solve the city's homeless problem. He could easily build housing in downtown Seattle, but he uses his spare cash looking for ways to get off of planet Earth, ASAP.

Unfortunately racism is an ongoing thing that will continue as long as one human being thinks that they are superior to another human being because of their skin pigmentation.
It won't end while my skin pigment is better than you skin pigment.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/14/2020 12:34PM by thedesertrat1.

thedesertrat1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Unfortunately racism is an ongoing thing that will
> continue as long as one human being thinks that
> they are superior to another human being because
> of their skin pigmentation.
> It won't end while my skin pigment is better
> than you skin pigment.

What's ironic is that if we all just forgot all the bogus racist myths we were indoctrinated to believe, and just listened to the story told by our DNA, we'd all know we were kin,
we'd be more kind to one another.
we'd be more kind to our close relatives, the Bonobos and Chimpanzees, given the fact they're more closely related to us than either of us are to Gorillas or any or the other African or Asian apes.
We'd be more kind to all the animals than we are.
We'd be more kind to the earth, which wasn't put here, just for man, but for woman and all the other creatures that live along with us on this thin membrane between the heavens above us and the hell beneath us.

I think we tend to agree more than disagree

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> thedesertrat1 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Unfortunately racism is an ongoing thing that
> will
> > continue as long as one human being thinks that
> > they are superior to another human being
> because
> > of their skin pigmentation.
> > It won't end while my skin pigment is better
> > than you skin pigment.
>
> What's ironic is that if we all just forgot all
> the bogus racist myths we were indoctrinated to
> believe, and just listened to the story told by
> our DNA, we'd all know we were kin,
> we'd be more kind to one another.
> we'd be more kind to our close relatives, the
> Bonobos and Chimpanzees, given the fact they're
> more closely related to us than either of us are
> to Gorillas or any or the other African or Asian
> apes.
> We'd be more kind to all the animals than we are.
>
> We'd be more kind to the earth, which wasn't put
> here, just for man, but for woman and all the
> other creatures that live along with us on this
> thin membrane between the heavens above us and the
> hell beneath us.

I've heard rumors that black african guys have (on average) bigger 'member' than guys of other races...

So, does that make them superior?

Google that anyone?

It sounds like nudism is an almost completely Caucasian phenomenon.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

GNPE Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I've heard rumors that black african guys have (on
> average) bigger 'member' than guys of other
> races...
>
> So, does that make them superior?
>
> Google that anyone?

Why is it always white dudes who are concerned with other dudes penis size? WTF?
Is that the only thing that makes someone "superior"? You reduce an entire race's value to the size of their sex organs?
Not their cultural contributions, not their athletic ability, musical talent, intelligence, wisdom?
Just the size of their junk?
Also do you know how that graph compares to average SAT scores by ethnicity? Especially curious about Asians and Ashkanazi Jews.

If you were a "respectable" married woman back then, you didn't have any rights. You were bought and paid for in an arranged marriage, you were considered "legally dead," and you were at the mercy of your husband's impulses without the right of refusal.

Who's the "they" you're talking about, Tyson?

ETA: I am sincerely asking for clarification. I'm not implying anything.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2020 01:17AM by Beth.

I grew up in a family where my maternal side was composed of unreconstructed racists (including one former KKK: my step-grandfather).

My sense of that side of the family is that, despite science, the law, and nearly universal custom, they did not (and COULD not!) consider black Americans (specifically: AMERICANS--this did not necessarily apply to non-Americans) fully human.

They all died (thankfully, all of them are now deceased) as racist as they had ever been--with one possible exception: my Mom, who I think had been in the process of dealing with her prejudices back to when I was an adolescent. (I am inherently NOT racist; I thought THEY were all literally insane on this particular subject, and my actions towards other people were always in accord with my inner beliefs--which I have reason to believe prompted my Mom to reconsider her own inner beliefs.)

SC: If it were scientifically established, today, that orangutans and gorillas, or dolphins (because dolphins appear to have what we consider "human" intelligence), were equal to humans, would you be surprised that, twenty years from now, a chunk of Americans would still have problems with this "new belief"?

I think the problems with certain people (which definitely includes the maternal side of my family, possibly less my Mom in her last years), are not dissimilar.

If you, or anyone, grows up being taught that a chunk of human beings are NOT "really" full human beings, and this belief is reinforced by most everything around you, and by mainstream American culture, then changing that belief can--at least for some people (like my maternal-side family)--be close to impossible (absent some major life change, like being formally or informally adopted by a black family, and experiencing black culture as something "of course" in your own life, which does happen routinely in the case of black/white intermarriage or adoption, whether it is "you" who is involved, or someone like an adult child of yours who chooses this as their own family affiliation).



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 09/14/2020 09:47PM by Tevai.

I see posts again and again from distant (non-LDS) relatives on FamilySearch about the military service of this Confederate ancestor or that one.

I know, for the little it's worth, that I had male ancestors on both sides of the US Civil War. (I went and checked each ancestor's military service to be sure.) I'm pretty sure they did too. But you don't see them crowing about their Union ancestors.

Some people are incorrigible.

Tyson

Science never stopped people from hating or killing each other. Neither did genetics.

It would appear that you subscribe to the Fallacy of Shoulds, then get very frustrated when things aren't as they "should" be.

Racism should have never existed in the first place.

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Racism should have never existed in the first
> place.


I'm pretty sure racism is deeply ingrained in us and it's a lot like competing chimpanzee groups taking over each other's territory (or any other group for that matter). The first thing they do is murder all the "other" males and babies and kidnap and rape the adult females to procreate. We're not much different, unfortunately. We've done the same thing to native tribes every time we've gone in and 'settled' a continent. First we brought them our white Male God, and if they didn't accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, then we killed/enslaved/raped them.
How are we any different from Chimpanzees in that behavior?

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> How are we any different from Chimpanzees in that
> behavior?

Speaking as a species (a species who knows a great deal about our historical and pre-historical past), we aren't that different.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/14/2020 06:50PM by Tevai.

Tevai Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> schrodingerscat Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > How are we any different from Chimpanzees in
> that
> > behavior?
>
> Speaking as a species (a species who knows a great
> deal about our historical and pre-historical
> past), we aren't that different.

Of course we're not. Africa is littered with the ancient remains of chimp cities, chimp railroads, chimp boats, chimp power plants and more importantly of all, we can read how similar we are to them in the copious chimp literature and inscriptions they have left behind.

What I like best about being part of a race is getting to the finish line, in Helsinki!

No it isn't! I suggest you read some ancient writings. The Classical Civilizations were not very kind when it came to ethnic groups who looked different than them.

The idea that racism is 400 years old (why that date?!) is nonsense. Prejudice is hard wired into people.

Ethnocentrism, national bias, and racism are totally different things.

Modern racism as we know it didn't exist in the ancient world.

Racism has two components: (a) a belief in race-based superiority and (b) power.

There are genetic traits but all humans are the same biologically and "race" really does not exist in a scientific sense and this has been known since the late 1800s.

Ever see kids on a playground? They don't see race. People "see" races because they were taught to see them.

The Greeks and Romans didn't care what "race" you were and Christian morality didn't exist yet. If you were captured and sold into slavery, they made you do the dirty work they didn't want to do. It had nothing to do with you ethnic background or where you came from.


Fast forward fifteen hundred years. New World slavery arose as a need for labour to produce sugar, indigo, tobacco, and rice. Who would do it? Native Americans? There weren't enough of them and a cleric named Bartolomeo de las Casas put the kabosh on that. Who else? Hmmm...Africans? Not much was known about sub-Saharan Africa, but some of the rulers were willing to "sell" their people in exchange for trade goods. Eventually, due to Christianity and the coming Enlightenment, there was a lot of moral outrage about this. How do you stop that? You start to tell people that black Africans were not really people, that they weren't fully human, and they were better off as slaves. Besides, they could be "saved" through Christ and "civilised."

This idea that black = subhuman = slave was new. The ancients never had that.

Now fast foward to the seventeenth century. There are blacks and whites being worked close to death on plantations in America and in the Caribbean. How do you stop them from joining forces and rebelling against you? You start a racial caste system. All of a sudden, people from the dregs of English society could have something. They weren't going to be rich, but they weren't going to be totally stepped on either. All they would have to do is play by the rules their masters set for them, do as they were told, and if they were still alive at the end of their term of service they'd get land (if they were willing to kill the indians on it and pay rent). For the first time in recorded history "white" (a term for people that never really existed before) was "better."

That's how this got started.

It's time for it to end.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2020 08:05PM by anybody.

I like this review a lot.

But it got me thinking. Scat is correct that humans have always divided themselves into "us" versus "them." But something definitely changed; as you note, the "them" became permanent and was based on African "race." So suddenly an entire people, an ethnicity, became a different and more extreme "them" and this status was viewed as inherent.

But is that the only time in history that "them" status has become virtually permanent? No. Jews were "permanent" outsiders for well over a millennium. It's true that Jews could escape that status if they managed to pass as Caucasians, but that is true of light-skinned blacks as well. So in at least that one case and in some ways Jews were treated as Africans later would be, meaning as a distinct and genetically inferior people.

Now, you can argue that Jews were not racially different from Caucasians. But neither are Africans. What matters in this context is that Jews were treated as such; their nature and curse were viewed as lasting as long as the earth. So in that sense they were precursors for Africans and their descendants. And there may have been another precedent: Dravidians after the Indo-European invasions of northern India, which created a caste system that is correlated with, if not identical to, skin color.

Obviously I'm skimming over important details, but perhaps racism--meaning the combination of notions of racial ranking and oppression--isn't so new. It existed in 1500 BCE India and in Christian Europe and continues in some forms today. That does not render commonplace the abominable treatment that Africans and their descendants have suffered; some things are definitely unique, including the uniquely evil institution of chattel slavery.

All I am suggesting is that there was no point at which someone pushed the "on" button. Perhaps what was unusual around 1600 CE was the association of race with permanent chattel slavery. THAT never existed in the ancient world.

I look forward to reading any response you care to share.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2020 08:37PM by Lot's Wife.

Ethnocentrism and racism are very different.

You mentioned Jews and Caucasians.

Let's start with the latter.

Literally, "caucasians" are people from the Caucasus — the mountain range of southeastern Europe. But this term wasn't even used to mean "white European" before the eighteenth century. All this racial terminology that we use today was invented.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism

Suppose you went back in time with Marco Polo on his trip to China. Back then, people from Europe would most likely describe themselves as "Christians," Africans as "Mohammedans" or "Moors," etc. "White" as an ethnic term was still hundreds of years in the future. Marco Polo himself doesn't even use the word "Hindu" (from the Greek word "'Indoi," after the Indus River) but instead refers to them in religious terms as "idolaters." The Chinese thought these ragamuffins from the other side of the world as uncivilised, uncultured barbarians. The ancient Persians thought the Greeks to be the same while the Greeks thought the Persians to be effete lovers of luxury. That's ethnocentrism.


The "untouchables" (no longer referred to by that name, Dalit is now the proper term) come close to the American version of systemic black racism, but they come in all colors and from many places and are not a distinct ethnic group per se. But that's religious, not racial.


Now to the Jews. The Romans could care less about what gods you worshiped as long as you pledged loyalty to the Emperor. The Christians wouldn't do this and were persecuted. But the Jews never became Christians, were blamed for executing Jesus when the Romans were actually responsible, and were then regarded as evil in their midst. Is Judaism a religion or a "race?" Many modern Jews say a religion and this is the common view in America and Britain. In continental Europe, Jewishness is regarded as an ethnicity akin to being black or Hispanic (which itself is a constructed term) in the USA. I'm reminded of a scene from "Conspiracy" (2001) about the infamous Wannsee Conference where Heydrich and the other top Nazis are trying to reach a definitive definition on who is a Jew and what traits qualify someone as Jewish and they followed the same infamous "one drop" rule as many southern states did in America. But there are Jews from many different places and ethnic groups. There's even endo-ethnic racism amongst Jews, too.


All this stuff is arbitrary and invented. None of it is natural. Ethnocentrism is as old as the hills, but it's not the same as saying "you have the genetic characteristics of group X, therefore you can only be a slave."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2020 11:29PM by anybody.

A couple of points.

First, while race is a nonsensical idea in biological terms, it is sociologically meaningful because people chose to believe in it. If the dominant class in Europe considered Jews a different "race," that is the question we have to address rather than observing that the term is itself factually inaccurate. Were Jews hereditarily subjected to discrimination? Yes. Would the discovery of a person's Jewish identity result in new burdens on him and his descendants? Absolutely. The social treatment was dependent on the notion that Jews were by blood and character fundamentally different from, and inferior to, Christians, a word that effectively meant Europeans.

Second, you distinguish between ethnocentrism and racism on the grounds that racism requires a description of the genetic characteristics of different groups. But that doesn't work. No one in 1600, when you say racism took root, had any notion of genes or genetics. The focus was on observable physical characteristics: blood, skin color, facial traits, etc., the physical manifestations of what would centuries later be called genes. So by your own reckoning racism existed before genetics.

I agree with you in your broad outlines. The classical world did not have a concept of race and it did not affect their social and political norms; the Islamic world was likewise free from anything like modern racism. But there were exceptions. At some point in the late Roman period or the early Middle Ages, the concept of Jews as permanently "other" by dint of bloodlines and national character emerged as the basis for communal and personal discrimination. That should meet the definition you posited before: "(a) a belief in race-based superiority and (b) power."

I will also push back, somewhat more tentatively, on the Indian question. The name India, as you know, stems from the Indus River, but that river was named after an ethnic group: the Aryans, whose tribal name informed both "Sindhu/Hindu/Indu/India" and "Iran." Moreover Reich and his colleagues at Harvard have found that the caste system was originally very tightly correlated with genetics; and even today the four castes are related closely to the percentage of a person's genome that is either Indo-European or Dravidian. The degree of endogeny is striking. Then there are the Ainu in northern Japan and the Shandi people of Taiwan, both ethnic minorities displaced by invading groups that imposed on them something approaching permanent "other" status.

What I am suggesting is that while modern racism is different from the old prejudices, there were intermediate cases in various times and places. As you know, generalizations about human social organization are always dangerous. People are just too complex for simple categorization--although what happened with Africans and slavery does appear to be historically unprecedented.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2020 12:13AM by Lot's Wife.

If you want to define modern racism as slavery, then I accept that racism dates to about 1600. What ensued was a uniquely nefarious form of the ill, unprecedented really.

What I'm trying to get is the "otherness = nonhuman = slave" to be bought and sold as cattle and sheep thing.

As you've said, there's been lots of "othering" by and towards lots of different groups throughout history.

Slavery still exists all over the world. Traditional slavery is a class / power phenomenon — just as it was in the ancient world.

But the New World / African slavery thing seems to be unique and I'm arguing that white supremacy, the "white man's burden," and what we call "racism" today were a product of African slavery and colonialism.

I don't accept that racism is simply a natural or tribal group thing. Young children notice physical differences, but they don't have a concept of racial superiority. That is taught to them by their parents.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2020 01:13AM by anybody.

Okay, we are getting closer to agreement--which is where I like to be with you.

I would only differentiate between racism and chattel slavery, which is a distinctly odious form of the former. But racism--meaning your definition of a) a sense of superiority based in a sense of physical difference, and b) power--has existed forever. The steppe peoples, for instance, believed that mounted people were morally superior to sedentary peoples who lived off the ground like animals. Because of that belief, the Mongols had no difficulty conducting genocide against agricultural peoples across Eurasia. The difference between the riders and the farmers did not line up with our sense of "race," but to them it was the equivalent.

I also think the difference between "ethnicity" and "race" is arbitrary. In many instances there is no clear way to tell them apart. As you say, these terms are arbitrary and fluid.

And if we are talking about modern racism, the role of the Napoleonic Wars is crucial. The French swept over Europe and spoke of one European people who should have equal status and rights. But in practice there were the French and then everybody else, so when the reaction began it was based in national identity in a way that had never happened before. The sense of English, German, Italian, and other nations now took on a political meaning that would have profound implications: that was the origin of the "nation-state" and the death knell for multinational states like Austria and Russia.

Moreover it would spread to the Middle East in the middle 19th century and East Asia in the following decades. This informed 20th century racism. It marked the end of the period in which Christians and Jews could safely live in Islamic countries, and it contributed to the Japanese atrocities against the Chinese and Southeast Asians in World War Two as well as to German atrocities, based on national/racial identity, against the Slavs, the Jews, and others. That was modern nationalism, which intensified modern racism.

My story differs from yours but it is, frankly, more standard in political and social history. Racism/ethnocentrism has been present at various times and places. It took on new form after Napoleon's depredations, when the sense of nationhood reinforced older forms of racism. I prefer to keep chattel slavery separate because it was, I would argue, both qualitatively and quantitatively unique. Bouts of racism had fed sporadic genocides throughout human history, but the permanence and commercialization of the dehumanization of Africans was uniquely horrible.

I agree with you about children, too.

anybody Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> n/t
As if "In-group" vs. "Out-group" psychology was only "deliberately created 400yrs ago"?
Pretty sure tribalism existed before humans, given the fact Chimpanzees murder/rape "out-groups" as a survival mechanism. We have not progressed far beyond that behavior, yet, but we still have time and the ability to progress beyond the troglodyte behavior of our more simian cousins.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2020 02:51PM by schrodingerscat.

I think it's the grownup version of fear of strangers. And it's not just color, it's also culture. In the early days of the 20th century, various groups were on the "out" list as they immigrated to the U.S. -- the Irish, the Italians, etc.

I think this goes back to the earliest days of humankind when someone not of your family group or tribe may have been viewed with suspicion, because that person may have represented a threat to your survival.

I don't think this is a problem that you solve in a day, or a week, or a year, or a decade, or even a century. It's a long term project.

You're comparison of INNA and treatment of Italian immigrants and hell, Benjamin Franklin HATED Germans. Like, "Move them OUT of the city NOW" doesn't address immutable characteristics.

You can change your last name, but you can't change the color of your skin.

The superior race is not related to skin pigmentation, athletic ability, tendency to be caring of others, etc. Superiority rests merely on which race first realized the value of gunpowder for uses other than fireworks. Hopefully in the future we can learn to base superiority on characteristics that really matter or possibly get where we don't even care about superiority but I doubt it will be in my lifetime.

I think Lurker 1 is just saying that racism is the province of the powerful. He who has the guns decides which race (her own) is the superior one.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think Lurker 1 is just saying that racism is the
> province of the powerful. He who has the guns
> decides which race (her own) is the superior one.

A lot of slavery in history has been among people of the same race. Africans used to enslave Africans and Polynesians enslaved Polynesians, Europeans enslaved Europeans.

The idea slavery was always about skin color is another untruth.