The roots of racism

[Hannah Bell]

Racism is a particular form of oppression. It stems from discrimination against a group of people based on the idea that some inherited characteristic, such as skin color, makes them inferior to their oppressors. Yet the concepts of "race" and "racism" are modern inventions. They arose and became part of the dominant ideology of society in the context of the African slave trade at the dawn of capitalism in the 1500s and 1600s.

Although it is a commonplace for academics and opponents of socialism to claim that Karl Marx ignored racism, Marx in fact described the processes that created modern racism. His explanation of the rise of capitalism placed the African slave trade, the European extermination of indigenous people in the Americas and colonialism at its heart. In Capital, Marx writes:

"The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of the continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of black skins are all things that characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist production...

What is a Negro slave? A man of the black race. The one explanation is as good as the other. A Negro is a Negro. He only becomes a slave in certain relations. A cotton spinning jenny is a machine for spinning cotton. It only becomes capital in certain relations. Torn away from these conditions, it is as little capital as gold by itself is money, or as sugar is the price of sugar."

In this passage, Marx shows no prejudice to Blacks ("a man of the black race," "a Negro is a Negro"), but he mocks society's equation of "Black" and "slave" ("one explanation is as good as another"). He shows how the economic and social relations of emerging capitalism thrust Blacks into slavery ("he only becomes a slave in certain relations"), which produce the dominant ideology that equates being African with being a slave.

These fragments of Marx's writing give us a good start in understanding the Marxist explanation of the origins of racism. As the Trinidadian historian of slavery Eric Williams put it: "Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery." And, one should add, the consequence of modern slavery at the dawn of capitalism. While slavery existed as an economic system for thousands of years before the conquest of America, racism as we understand it today did not exist...


http://socialistworker.org/2010/10/21/the-roots-of-racism

[vonarrow]

1. re: Racism

Intelligent writing....very good.

[leftstreet]

2. "They divided both to conquer each "

...Frederick Douglass

Excellent, excellent article!
Recommended reading

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

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[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

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[Liberal_Stalwart71]

14. Obviously I don't agree with Mr. Taylor's assertion, but it is very interesting, in my view,

in these theories about so-called immutable characteristics of one race v. another as the underlying rationale for racism. I find it fascinating, not agreeable.

[The Magistrate]

40. That, Ma'am, Is One Sick Pup....

[RKP5637]

4. Didn't it really start even with the native American indians? It seems to me a

portion of this country has also been racist against just about every nationality in the US. In the US even the minorities are racist against other minorities. It's a phenomenal place when it comes to who hates whom and why, and often possible to be in several spectrums of hatred at once. What a place... no element of hatred is left unturned.

[Hannah Bell]

5. why comment if you're not going to read the link?

[RKP5637]

8. I stand to be corrected. Yes, I had read the summary and had not read the link.

Got it! Thanks!

[Hannah Bell]

9. my apologies if i was overly abrupt.

[RKP5637]

11. No, you were fine. I just had not realized how extremely interesting and indepth

the article was. I just read the entire article and found I learned a lot and it did answer my questions! Thanks!!!

[leftstreet]

6. You'll really enjoy reading the article. Many answers to your questions

It's worth reading.

You're viewing racism through a contemporary lens.

[RKP5637]

12. Thanks! I just read the entire article and as you said there were many answers to

my questions. The article is incredible!!!

[Starry Messenger]

7. k & r

[Kind of Blue]

13. It is a good Marxist take but I take exception with this

"It was not, first and foremost, a system for producing white supremacy."

The idea that Negroes are a slave race continued to the colonies and not the other way around. And I'm talking beginning in Portugal and Spain, moving up to Northern Europe. This Negro race included Africans and Native Americans. Racism galvanized the blacks=slave well before before the colonies.

If you want a more comprehensive history of racism and slavery, I suggest http://www.yale.edu/glc/events/race/Sweet.pdf

Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Gilder Lehrman Center International Conference at Yale University
Collective Degradation: Slavery and the Construction of Race
November 7-8, 2003 Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut
Spanish and Portuguese Influences on Racial Slavery in British North America, 1492-1619
James H. Sweet, Florida International University

[OneGrassRoot]

33. Thanks for this...

:hi:

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

15. Also, I don't agree that slavery preceded racism or that racism is a consequence of slavery.

NO! Racism came first. It is precisely because one race believes that another race is inherently inferior that the former was able to justify the dehumanization of the latter.

Yes, slavery is an economic system, but you have to have an ideology that will bolster the institutionalization of racism.

Slaver works best when one convinces another that one is superior to the other.

[Kind of Blue]

16. Exactly, the article glosses over the whole history of

racism before the American colonies. It's like pulling an O'Donnell - if the exact words race or racism didn' appear before the colonies, well then race/racism just didn't exist until then.

Racism is NOT a consequence of slavery. It was there all along.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

17. If its Marx, its not going to be correct

Some of his observations were correct for his time but his follow on to them are almost always flawed.

[Kind of Blue]

19. I see. I don't know too much about Marx but I know

that the author of the article did not do his/her homework and is passing along the same twisted history that I will always refute. I could tolerate if one posits that racism grew with economic greed. But to insist it was purely on economic grounds is unadulterated bullshit.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

20. Actually I do know a great deal about Marx

and anyone who does understands his failures

[Kind of Blue]

24. Gotcha and believe you.

I never thought I'd be interested in this fellow, Marx. But I'm really curious now. If I didn't know a little of what the OP is referencing I think I'd have gone along with it. Thanks very much.

[Hannah Bell]

26. do elucidate, progressive.

[Kind of Blue]

28. I'll tell you one thing, ProgessiveP sparked

my interest in Marx and not the Marxist author with poor scholarship who starts a history lesson 200 years after the fact.

[Hannah Bell]

30. i'll tell you one thing; i think you're being disingenuous. ps: the history lesson started in the

1400s.

but i understand, you don't like the pov.

you prefer to believe that something you style "racism" existed in the psyches of human beings since the creation. despite the multiplicity of evidence that historical behavioral evidence for this psychological construct varies widely, in twin with varying economic arrangements.

[Kind of Blue]

32. The lesson from 1400 covers 1 sentence

when a lot has been written about centuries old pre-existing European stereotypes of Africans - that simply encompassed other dark-skinned people - before the "economic arrangements." These views were used to codify that black=slave as European economic greed and desire for servants for life grew. The segue was easy, there was no need for them to sit around to figure out how to justify racial slavery.

I suggest you do your own research, before the Atlantic slave trade's capitalism, starting with the Biblical Curse of Ham and the xenophobia through the centuries that made Africans' very existence the meaning of slavery.

[Hannah Bell]

34. I suggest you keep your suggestions to yourself. I read your paper; it's

a bunch of cherries.

There was no "before economic arrangements."

Economic arrangements are the basis of human survival. Your paper doesn't discuss them at all, just throws up uncontextualized cherries.

[Kind of Blue]

38. "economic arrangements" were your words.

Of course it makes no sense to you because racism did not exist until the North American colonies and I doubt that you'd look any deeper.

As one poster put it "the jury is still out." And that to me is the most important aspect of the debate, not everyone will readily buy into this revision of history. That's a great start.

[Hannah Bell]

39. yes, i know they were my words. but yours were *before*.

you seem to be good at missing the point.

since you're so well-versed in the history, you should recognize that this "revision" is basically cribbed from eric williams' "capitalism & slavery", written in 1944, a much more extensive work.

if you were so well-versed as you profess to be, you'd be aware of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism_and_Slavery

goodbye now.

[Kind of Blue]

42. Didn't miss it. Just pointing out your trite words for

racial slavery.
Doesn't matter where the crib came from, it's still flawed.
Yeah, see ya around the board :hi:

[Hannah Bell]

43. it's only in your mind that "economic arrangements" meant "the economics of slavery"/

which is why i said there was no *before*.

your link ignored economics altogether.

you *did* miss it. you have misunderstood the point completely.

[Scruffy1]

49. Nice post and will lead to lively discussions

This is what blogs should be about. Ideas.

[Hannah Bell]

18. you were there, were you? people don't need race to dehumanize each other,

any sign of difference will do -- where there is a need to dehumanize in order to use or destroy the other.

that doesn't mean that "racism" motivated slavery or preceded it.

[Kind of Blue]

21. Really, no one denies that economics did not

play a role and constant dehumanization of the "other" but to deny that racism did not precede slavery is flawed.

Here is part of the introduction of the link I referenced above.

The evolution of racial slavery, first in Europe, then in the Atlantic islands, and finally in the Americas was a process that was always building on the experiences of the past. I do not mean to suggest a teleological inevitability in this process. Quite the contrary, Europeans made conscious decisions in constructing themselves and others during this time, decisions that often saw various European nations in conflict with one another.

Nevertheless, from as early as the fifteenth century Europeans shared a common matrix of perception in their assessments of cultural and racial “others.” Although fragmentation, competition, and warfare existed between various European nations, these divisions could be measured in degrees. Catholics and Protestants fought for religious supremacy, but all European nations were Christian nations. Kings and Queens fought for sovereignty and the rights of succession, but all European nations had centralized monarchies. In southern Europe, humanism was utilized to strengthen the Catholic Church, while in northern Europe it was a tool of Protestants. Nevertheless, the scholarship and inquiry that were at the core of humanist philosophy placed new emphasis on individual rights across Europe.

Thus, even as Europe was in turmoil in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, these conflicts over the correct forms of Christianity, centralized government, and individual rights served to reinforce a broadly shared definition of what it meant to be “European.” This “oneness” was brought into sharp effect when Europeans encountered “new” peoples in Africa and the Americas, and it strongly impacted on their decisions to enslave.

When the Atlantic slave trade began in 1441, most Africans were placed into an entirely new and different category of enslaveable peoples. On the one hand, they were considered “gentiles,” theoretically capable of conversion to Christianity and even integration into the emerging nation-state (whose subjects were defined primarily by their Christian identity). On the other hand, Africans were considered so “barbaric” that their human capacities were often called into question. Describing the first African slaves taken by the Portuguese via the Atlantic, royal chronicler Gomes Eanes de Zurara noted that they were “bestial” and “barbaric.”2 Similarly, Hernando del Pulgar, appointed royal historian of Spain in 1482, wrote that the inhabitants of the Mina coast were “savage people, black men, who were naked and lived in huts.”3 During this early period, the cultural gulf that relegated Africans to barely-human status meant that spiritual and cultural “redemption” was a virtual impossibility.

[Hannah Bell]

25. i read the entire paper you linked, so there was no need to copy & bold it.

This level of evidence & analysis is (IMO) unconvincing & unsystematic:

"royal chronicler Gomes Eanes de Zurara noted that they were “bestial” and “barbaric.”2 Similarly, Hernando del Pulgar, appointed royal historian of Spain in 1482, wrote that the inhabitants of the Mina coast were “savage people, black men, who were naked and lived in huts.”

uh, so what? i can quote hundreds of similar accounts where members of a racial group said similar things about members of their own race who didn't happen to belong to their particular cultural grouping.

the portuguese/spanish slave trade = 3% of the historic trade, their dominance lasted less than 100 years, & for most of its tenure was small scale.

The development of slavery in the americas does not exhibit any straight-line continuity with the portuguese/spanish trade, nor do racial attitudes in the americas, nor does actual practice. Nor does the author demonstrate that portuguese/spanish "racism" preceded the portuguese/spanish trade.

[Kind of Blue]

27. LOL! Riiight, sure you read it. n/t

[Hannah Bell]

31. yes, i did. sorry you find it so unbelievable. i read it when you linked it.

i confess, i just skimmed the last quarter because it was so god-awful boring & i'd already gotten the drift of the author's argument, but i did read it.

but i notice you don't respond to the point: the fact that such-&such spanish or portuguese commenter called such & such african group "savage" or "bestial" is pretty much a red herring, not a support for the proposition that a construct called "racism" existed prior to slavery.

as i can find white people calling other whites the same, asians calling other asians the same, etc. during approximately the same period.

[Radical Activist]

45. The article's suggestion

that racism only emerged at the dawn of capitalism is easily disproven fantasy. Both slavery and racism existed long before capitalism or the African slave trade.

[blindpig]

22. On the money.

Racism as we know it originated as a divide and conquer tactic.

[TBF]

35. +1 nt

[One_Life_To_Give]

23. Roots would be in our Tribal Oragins IMO

Racism in various forms has existed throughout human history.

[closeupready]

29. K&R

n/t

[maryf]

36. Kick

important thread to keep alive...

[Fire1]

37. The jury is still out

on it's origin b/c there are numerous theories to the contrary.

[cherokeeprogressive]

41. Bullshit. The roots of racism reach all the way back to the moment human beings began to form

social structures.

"You don't look like me. You can't be part of my group." That goes back to the day we began picking our knuckles off of the ground when we ambulated.

[Hannah Bell]

46. funny because race wasn't the criterion for "not looking like me"

as people living in proximity when "people began to form social structures" looked pretty much the same -- racially. being fearful of or aggressive toward people who aren't of one's own group isn't coterminous with "racism"

[Radical Activist]

44. Many Marxists don't deal with racism well.

Some try too hard to make Marxism the cure for all ailments. That's where we get idiotic theories like the idea that black people in America can't be racist because they aren't part of the dominant oppressive group. The truth is that some problems don't have an exclusively economic solution.

[Hannah Bell]

47. the article isn't about solving a problem, "rad," it's about exploring the origins of a social

phenomenon, which is institutionalized racism -- something which appeared concurrent with capitalism.

capitalists are very uncomfortable with this, which is why they try to explain it away with the typical individualistic explanations: people are just naturally "racist," so they do bad things to people of different "races."

which elides the point that they do exactly the same kind of bad things to people of their own "race" as well.

japan has been racially homogenous for most of its history.

they enslaved other japanese, & later other asians.

there later there evolved a "discriminated class" of japanese ("eta" = "filth" or "hinin" = "non-human") whose position in japanese society was similar to that of blacks during jim crow; which had its own "civil rights movement" at approximately the same time as the us movement; but which still feels the effects of discrimination in things like higher rates of poverty, poorer school performance, higher crime rates, & lower iq scores.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,910511,00.html

these people look just like other japanese. there is no physical or genetic difference from mainstream japanese.

being as they look just like other japanese, americans can't imagine how they could be identified & discriminated against -- but there are lots of mechanisms.

most societies have similar phenomena.

the underlying similarity is economic.

americans are so conditioned by their own history they can't see outside the box of race to the bigger picture.

[Radical Activist]

48. The article does exactly what I accused it of.

The last sentence:
"Therefore, the final triumph over racism will only come when we abolish racism's chief source--capitalism--and build a new socialist society."

This is yet another desperate attempt to make socialism the answer to all problems that ever have or ever will arise in human existence. It's a zealotry only matched by Mormon missionaries. It's easy to prove that racism long predated capitalism and it's astounding that anyone is gullible enough to believe such a ridiculous claim. It's equally foolish to believe that institutional racism can't occur in a socialist economy. There are plenty of modern examples.

Prejudice is also a human problem that can and does exist independent of an economic system. Even ending the systemic racism in our current capitalist economy will not automatically resolve the issue of personal racial prejudices. To deny that reality in attempt to present communism as the holy grail which resolves all problems is misguided fanaticism.

[Hannah Bell]

51. it's not proposing a solution but stating a fact. "discrimination" in its

strong form (a general/institutionalized cultural phenomenon) is at root motivated by economics & resource competition. there's no case where it's not.

where economics doesn't reinforce & institutionalize discrimination, prejudice disappears, & that is so self-evident to anyone who's lived through such changes. my own immediate extended family has mexican, vietnamese, japanese & black in-laws. when i was young any of those marriages would have been beyond the pale.

it's not easy to prove "racism" predated capitalism at all. claiming it is doesn't make it so.

[Radical Activist]

50. I often edit my remarks to fix errors or clarify what I meant.

But you post something, let a person reply, and then edit your comment to make it something completely different. This isn't the first time you've done that. I don't think it's a very honest way to discuss things. If you wanted to present a completely new idea from your original comment then you should have made a new reply to me. Right now, it looks as though my reply to you doesn't address your point, but it's only because I was responding to what you wrote the first time.

[Hannah Bell]

52. i don't edit my posts to say something completely different. i edit my posts to make my meaning

clearer. i didn't read your comment as i was editing, & i don't read other people's comments when i edit. i write, post, have another thought & edit.

see?

while i was editing the post you speak of i was also googling for some pictures of burakumin from a specific book i own, but couldn't find them & added the TIME article instead.





Nancho: What is the historical background of the buraku communities?

NM: The burakumin were constituted as a class under the Edo shogunate's social order of shi-n6-ko-sho (warriors, farmers, artisans, merchants), so that oppressed peasants could aim their suppressed feelings and anger downward at the outcast class. But this was not a sudden political decision.

From the end of the Heian period (about the twelfth century) there were so-called medieval-era outcast groups appearing gradually. Some of those have to do with the current burakumin and some don't. They were excluded from regular village communities, and they had particular occupations and formed their own communities. One of the occupations that has continued to the present day is the handling of dead animals and human corpses, including butchering and tanning...

In the Edo era the outcasts maintained their "defiling" trades, although they lived much like peasants. During Meiji, their economic base was destroyed, by the government's deflationary policy and then the development of capitalism. By 1910, buraku communities became the cores of the many slum areas that grew up in various parts of the country, and since then they have tended to suffer from poverty as well as discrimination.

Did the idea of defilement originate in a religious tradition?

NM: Defilement is a universal concept, found in cultures throughout the world. In Japan, it was combined with Buddhism. The idea of jodo, the pure land, is the conceptual opposite of shoku-e.

How has the situation of the buraku changed in recent years?

NM: The biggest changes came during the 1960's, the period of rapid economic growth. The labor market was expanding and the lives of the lower-class laborers, including many burakumin, began to improve. Also. in 1969 the government became serious about an assimilation program, which has continued since then. During the sixties the term "human rights" came into wide use. Before then there were peasant movements and labor movements, and they had been known as "social movements." From the late sixties, the issues of minorities and pollution and citizen's rights began, little by little, to receive recognition from the general public.

You see, the difficult thing about the buraku problem is that burakumin are social beings, not racial beings. You can't tell that I am from the buraku community just by looking at me, can you? So if I am socially successful, it might seem best to hide my background. It is unusual for successful people to say they are from the buraku community. But that is crucial to the development of a new consciousness. Those who succeed tend to hide their origin, and those who remain identified as burakumin maintain negative self-images. While there is generally no need to worry about people's origins, in this sense, I feel the necessity to declare that I'm a burakumin. I live in an apartment building, and our neighbors know that I am from the buraku community, and that my wife is not. We could have chosen not to tell anyone. but it doesn't bother us.




http://www.nancho.net/kyoto/nadamoto.html