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Meh. From a quick-ish skim, there is no mention of how profoundly racist the 19th century was, within "white European". From the better-off PoV, the (say) Iri

Meh. From a quick-ish skim, there is no mention of how profoundly racist the 19th century was, within "white European". From the better-off PoV, the (say) Irish and Italians (to say nothing of the slavs) were blatently inferior. And obviously the average (say) Englishman was nothing compared to even the lesser English nobility, and the higher nobility was far above them, and so on. "Scientific" racist theories are modern intellectual window-dressing, for let's-build-a-social-hierarchy-and-treat-those-blow-us-like-shit evils which humans had been eagerly indulging in, at scale, for thousands of years before Darwin.

krapp 2y ago
Irish, Italians and Slavs weren't considered "white" under the racial framework discussed in the article, and you seem to be confusing class with race. While the two are often correlated, they aren't the same. Race is a social and political construct but the article clearly and at length lays out the history and relationship between the modern concept of race and the naive and illiterate interpretation of Darwinism from which it originated, and which didn't exist before Darwinism.
- bell-cot 2y ago
  > Irish, Italians, and Slavs weren't considered "white" under... True-ish. And yet (by my skim) the article makes no mention of that - even though it's contrary to modern popular usage. Historically, a society's nobility very often were of a different "race" - the one which had shown up with an army, and conquered the society. (And I used England for a reason - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_conquest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_conquest .) And even when that was not the case, hereditary nobility were usually treated as socially/politically/genetically distinct from the commoners - which looks darned "racist", in the common meaning of that word. > Race is a social and political construct but the article clearly [...] the modern concept of race [...] My impression: Both you and the article are working within a particular intellectual bubble. Which bubble needs to be clearly labeled, but ain't.
  - snapplebobapple 2y ago
    Can we bring back Irish not being considered white? It would really help me when applying for all the federal government jobs in Canada that are specifically saying no caucasians.

krapp 2y ago

Irish, Italians and Slavs weren't considered "white" under the racial framework discussed in the article, and you seem to be confusing class with race. While the two are often correlated, they aren't the same. Race is a social and political construct but the article clearly and at length lays out the history and relationship between the modern concept of race and the naive and illiterate interpretation of Darwinism from which it originated, and which didn't exist before Darwinism.

bell-cot 2y ago
> Irish, Italians, and Slavs weren't considered "white" under... True-ish. And yet (by my skim) the article makes no mention of that - even though it's contrary to modern popular usage. Historically, a society's nobility very often were of a different "race" - the one which had shown up with an army, and conquered the society. (And I used England for a reason - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_conquest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_conquest .) And even when that was not the case, hereditary nobility were usually treated as socially/politically/genetically distinct from the commoners - which looks darned "racist", in the common meaning of that word. > Race is a social and political construct but the article clearly [...] the modern concept of race [...] My impression: Both you and the article are working within a particular intellectual bubble. Which bubble needs to be clearly labeled, but ain't.
- snapplebobapple 2y ago
  Can we bring back Irish not being considered white? It would really help me when applying for all the federal government jobs in Canada that are specifically saying no caucasians.