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<N. Africans have entered the conversation> You do realize that slavery, racism and every despicable thing imaginable was the normal state of humanity for 99.9

<N. Africans have entered the conversation> You do realize that slavery, racism and every despicable thing imaginable was the normal state of humanity for 99.999% of our 200,000+ year history? How many languages have names for a group of people based on some common attribute of that people, far before the 17th/18th century? A lot.

cmrdporcupine 6y ago
Human beings definitely did and still do very awful things. But that word race, as we understand it today, isn't really the thing they used to justify it. The question is whether "race" as we understand it today was understood that way then. And it wasn't. Not that we can see. 19th century pseudo-anthropology and earlier built up a whole concept of race which essentially defined humanity into subspecies. There was Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, etc. and these were then attached to specific supposedly scientifically defined traits that went far beyond the colour of skin or shape of eye. That is what is generally meant by race, _still_. And it turns out this is complete and total bunk. There's more genetic diversity and difference within Africa between "blacks" than there is between non-Africans and Africans. So the category of race is of absolutely no use except as a historical or ethno-linguistic-cultural designation, and there as well, it's a pretty crappy one. What do Kenyans and West Africans and African Americans have in common other than skin colour? Very little -- not linguistically, not genetically, and not much culturally, either, but they do share a history of being categorized together as "black" by Europeans. By saying "people always did this" you're ignoring a very specific meaning of race that has been used to justify, and still is, some pretty stupid _specifically_ awful crap. By calling "race" into question, we try to deal with that crap. Yes, humanity has always used difference as a way of justifying oppression. But this specific kind of imagined difference, it's important to analyze because it's a very _modern_ designation, without a scientific basis, and it had a very specific purpose, and still does for people who like to peddle pseudo-scientific superiority theories around it.
monadic2 6y ago
I mean if you're just going to conflate the concepts of race and ethnicity there's not much point to having this conversation at all.

cmrdporcupine 6y ago

Human beings definitely did and still do very awful things. But that word race, as we understand it today, isn't really the thing they used to justify it. The question is whether "race" as we understand it today was understood that way then. And it wasn't. Not that we can see. 19th century pseudo-anthropology and earlier built up a whole concept of race which essentially defined humanity into subspecies. There was Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, etc. and these were then attached to specific supposedly scientifically defined traits that went far beyond the colour of skin or shape of eye. That is what is generally meant by race, _still_. And it turns out this is complete and total bunk. There's more genetic diversity and difference within Africa between "blacks" than there is between non-Africans and Africans. So the category of race is of absolutely no use except as a historical or ethno-linguistic-cultural designation, and there as well, it's a pretty crappy one. What do Kenyans and West Africans and African Americans have in common other than skin colour? Very little -- not linguistically, not genetically, and not much culturally, either, but they do share a history of being categorized together as "black" by Europeans. By saying "people always did this" you're ignoring a very specific meaning of race that has been used to justify, and still is, some pretty stupid _specifically_ awful crap. By calling "race" into question, we try to deal with that crap. Yes, humanity has always used difference as a way of justifying oppression. But this specific kind of imagined difference, it's important to analyze because it's a very _modern_ designation, without a scientific basis, and it had a very specific purpose, and still does for people who like to peddle pseudo-scientific superiority theories around it.

monadic2 6y ago

I mean if you're just going to conflate the concepts of race and ethnicity there's not much point to having this conversation at all.