supporttheunderdog wrote:Madam!
It is quite clear that you have completely failed to understand the nature of this issue. This is the point of the debate:Kimon07 wrote:But the initial question here is this: Is racism an ancient phenomenon/practice? Or is it the curse of modern human history?
I maintain the latter and I intend to produce all the necessary evidence.
And:
Kimon, I think your premise that racism is a recent (British) invention is toast!
Allow me to disappoint you:
1. I never claimed that racism is a British invention. On the contrary, the sources I quoted and the links I offered were of authors supporting that it was the “product” as well as the alibi of all European colonial powers, including the British. It is not my fault if most of the examples used by the authors to support this were taken out of the British colonial past. I suppose this happens because the British colonial past consists the most abundant source of examples and cases of reference, due to the fact that the British colonial rule was the most extended in space and time.
2. Before asking the question whether racism is an ancient phenomenon I had clarified that by “racism” I mean the modern concept of it, i.e., the separation of people and of nations to superiors and inferiors AND ADDITIONALLY TO THIS the use of this separation as the excuse for the discrimination against, the conquest, the enslavement, the robbery and even the extermination of the “inferiors”. All the authors I linked you to agree, without exception, that under this concept racism IS INDEED the pure and undisputed modern European (mainly) product, used as an excuse for slavery and colonialism and that this is not a “premise” of mine.
3. Trying to “spread and splash the curse” as far back as the ancient civilizations and mainly the Greeks, you are mixing, as usual, irrelevant historical events and facts or, you give to ancient practices and ethics a meaning which THEY DID NOT HAVE THEN.
For instance, you are characterizing as racism the efforts or attempts of various Greek philosophers and scientists to explain the reasons of the differences in colour, body structure etc of the various nations. What is so “racist” in the effort/ attempt of philosophers and/or scientists to analyze and explain THE EXISTING DIFFERENCES between different people and in general the effort to analyze and explain the phenomena of the world we live in? Maybe I should remind you that (fortunately for Humanity) the Greeks were analysing and were trying to give answers to everything under the sun including the human nature, sole, mind etc. What is so “racist about that”? If it had not been for these exact elaborations of the Greeks about everything, we would probably still be in the Dark Ages.
4. And what is so racist about the eugenic suggestions or theories of the Greeks? Did they ever direct them or used them “against” other nations as the Nazis did? To suggest that your “ethnos” should safeguard its uniqueness and “purity” by avoiding mixing with others is racist? I would call it a “nationalistic” approach but not racist. Racist would be to say that “inferior” nations or groups of people should be “cleansed” by the use of eugenic methods or, (Germany-Turkey) be eliminated so as to keep them from mixing with members of your nation. Or are the Greeks to be blamed for the malicious misuse and misinterpretation by some of their theories? Does the misuse of their theories make both the theories and the Greeks racist? For example (even if irrelevant) would you condemn Democracy, because the communists have been misusing the term to determine the nature of their oppressive regimes and have committed despicable crimes against humanity in its name? And what is so racist about calling the non Greeks “barbarians” i.e., not Greek spoken = non Greek = foreigner? Why should we characterize the Greeks as racists for using that term to define foreigners just because WE, the modern Europeans, have given it a different meaning than that with which the Greeks were using it? Let me remind you that the Greeks were calling the Persians and the Egyptians “barbarians” but at the same time they were studying and openly praising and admiring many aspects of the civilizations and of the institutions and ways of both nations.
Conclusion. My “premise” is not toast. It’s a fact you can not deny.
See also below:
Racism
http://www.enotes.com/racism-reference/racism
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Scientific Racism
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The roots of modern racism lie in the late Medieval period, when Jewishness came to be regarded as an issue of ancestry rather than belief and black skin was seen as a curse that doomed Africans to mental and cultural inferiority. Because racism regarded Jewishness and blackness as unalterable biological facts, it followed that Jews and blacks could never be reformed and integrated into civilized society. Racism thus justified the expulsion and massacre of Jews in Spain beginning in 1492, and the subsequent persecution of Jews in other countries. It also justified the enslavement of millions of Africans in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The British came to excuse their domination of Ireland, in part, by depicting the Irish as an inferior race who would benefit from British rule.
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And more in above link.
