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A fascinating look at race and color among the Ancient Greeks, and well-contextualized. It's as if the author is trying to exonerate the ancient Greeks from th

A fascinating look at race and color among the Ancient Greeks, and well-contextualized. It's as if the author is trying to exonerate the ancient Greeks from the pervasive ideological racism (I really wish there was a more specific word for this phenomenon than "racism" as ot is a complex result of many things) of modern European history by demonstrating that "white" and "black" races did not exist with them, or at least not in any form we would recognize. But white + black != racism. Even if the categories came later, Aristotle did introduce the idea of the "natural slave," or the claim that certain races of people are only fit to be subjugated in forced labor to others. That's pretty much the essence of racism. The priests Christianized it, while the merchants learned the practice of transoceanic slaving from the North Africans. It's more like a pasta salad of evil with ingredients from all over the world.

everdev 8y ago
Does the term racial identity fit? It's feeling a belonging to a race but without racist implications.
coldtea 8y ago
>It's as if the author is trying to exonerate the ancient Greeks from the pervasive ideological racism Well, they didn't have "pervasive ideological racism". Even making someone a slave (which they did practice) wasn't about considering them inferior -- just considering it just spoils for them having lost a war. And they could care less if those were black or white or whatever. They could (and did) make slaves of people in the nearby city-states as well. Aristotle's idea of a "natural slave" wasn't really widespread as a cultural norm them. That would happen much later, especially with later Christianism, and would find it's ideological justification with colonialism and writers like Gobineau.