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What is Racism? Racism is the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics. Racial separatism is the belief, most of the time based on racism, that different races should remain segregated and apart from one another.
Racism has existed throughout human history. It may be defined as the hatred of one person by another -- or the belief that another person is less than human -- because of skin color, language, customs, place of birth or any factor that supposedly reveals the basic nature of that person. It has influenced wars, slavery, the formation of nations, and legal codes.
the past 500-1000 Racism on the part of Western powers toward non-Westerners has had a far more significant impact on history than any other form of racism (such as racism among Western groups or among Easterners, such as Asians, Africans, and others).
the past 500-1000 The most notorious example of racism by the West has been slavery, particularly the enslavement of Africans in the New World (slavery itself dates back thousands of years). This enslavement was accomplished because of the racist belief that Black Africans were less fully human than white Europeans and their descendants.
the past 500-1000 This belief was not "automatic": that is, Africans were not originally considered inferior. When Portuguese sailors first explored Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries, they came upon empires and cities as advanced as their own, and they considered Africans to be serious rivals.
the past 500-1000 Over time, though, as African civilizations failed to match the technological advances of Europe, and the major European powers began to plunder the continent and forcibly remove its inhabitants to work as slave laborers in new colonies across the Atlantic, Africans came to be seen as a deficient "species," as "savages."
the past 500-1000 To an important extent, this view was necessary to justify the slave trade at a time when Western culture had begun to promote individual rights and human equality.
the past 500-1000 The willingness of some Africans to sell other Africans to European slave traders also led to claims of savagery, based on the false belief that the "dark people" were all kinsmen, all part of one society - as opposed to many different, sometimes warring nations.
Racial Classification All of these arguments are based on a false understanding of race; in fact, contemporary scientists are not agreed on whether race is a valid way to classify people. What may seem to be significant "racial" differences to some people - skin color, hair, facial shape - are not of much scientific significance.
Racial Classification In fact, genetic differences within a so-called race may be greater than those between races. One philosopher writes: "There are few genetic characteristics to be found in the population of England that are not found in similar proportions in Zaire or in China….those differences that most deeply affect us in our dealings with each other are not to any significant degree biologically determined."
Winners and losers Human history consists of a grim series of annihilations and displacements of one group by another. The losers are Neanderthals, Aboriginees, Native Americans, and many others lost beyond naming.
Winners and losers The winners, it seems, are most of us. Many of us are genetically Europeans, almost all of us live in cultures that are fundamentally European, or are rapidly becoming dominated by Euro-American culture.
Winners and losers Our predecessors did something that left us ruling the world, and asking ourselves a lot of questions. What was special about the winners? What was wrong with the losers? What does it mean about us?
The Burning Question How then did white Europeans societies come to achieve worldwide supremacy over other people & cultures?
First & Foremost This discussion will attempt to demonstrate that this occurred not because of racial differences in intelligence, etc. but rather because of environmental differences. It will try to play down Eurocentric thinking and racist explanations because they are loathsome and wrong.
In fact Modern stone age peoples "are on the average probably more intelligent, not less intelligent, than industrialized peoples."
In fact New Guineans are "more intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and people around them than the average European or American is", traits which he attributes to survival of the fittest.
The race to world dominance The phrase "Guns, germs, and steel" sums up the obvious factors that brought European people and culture from obscurity to world domination.
The race to world dominance This discussion will hopefully explain why the guns, germs, and steel were all on the European side; why the age of global colonialism consisted of European rather than African, American, or Australian expansion.
The race to world dominance The answer, almost too clear and believable, is the luck of the draw of natural resources. The Eurasian continental landmass was the winner of the biological draw in two crucial ways.
The race to world dominance • Largest contiguous size of similar climate • Most domesticable crops and animals
Largest contiguous size of similar climate Because of the size and East-West orientation of the continent, agricultural and then technological innovations made in one part were able to spread through bands of similar climate to the rest of the continent.
Largest contiguous size of similar climate The diffusion of food production was facilitated in Eurasia because its predominantly East-West axis presented similar climatic, geographic, and disease conditions to migrants and no insuperable barriers.
Largest contiguous size of similar climate In contrast, the diffusion in the predominantly N-S axis in the Americans, Africa, and New Guinea/Australia was slowed by the greater variation in climate, deserts, diseases (e.g., trypanosomes), non-arable lands, jungles (e.g., Panama), etc.
Most domesticable crops and animals With the largest number of domesticatible species, Eurasians developed agriculture first.
Domesticable animals Only 14 large animals have been domesticated: • sheep, goat, cow, pig, horse, Arabian camel, Bactrian camel, llama and alpaca, donkey, reindeer, water buffalo, yak, Bali cattle, and Mithan (gayal, domesticated Gaur).
Domesticable animals Only one large animal, the llama/alpaca, is a New World domesticate (other New World domesticates include the guinea pig, Muscovy duck, turkey, and dog). Eurasia had many more animal candidates for domestication than the New World, giving its inhabitants a competitive advantage.
animal domestication and herding vs. hunter-gathering. benefits • Increased available calories (through milk, meat, manure fertilization, and pulling a plow). • Increased crop yields allows larger population density, more frequent child-bearing, storage of food surpluses which can sustain specialists such as a political elite, priests, scribes, artisans, etc.
Guns & Steel Eurasians developed into organized countries and empires, and achieved rapid technological progress---metal tools, writing, transportation
Animals also provide: • hides for warmth • transport capability • animal-derived germs for which partial immunity had developed and which have facilitated conquests.
Germs With a large and diverse population of animals in close contact with humans, many dangerous diseases arose and spread to become part of the microbe background with which Eurasians were infested, and to which they were, by natural selection, resistant.
Germs The major infectious "killers of humanity" in recent history were acquired from animals : • tuberculosis (from cattle) • smallpox (from cowpox or related) • flu (from pigs and ducks) • cholera …
Germs • malaria (Falciparum at least comes from birds) • bubonic plague • measles (from cattle rinderpest) • Pertussis was acquired from pigs & dogs.
Germs When Eurasians arrived, in their high-tech ships, on the shores of the Americas, or Australia, they almost did not need to use their high-tech swords and guns. They unknowingly carried microbes that had killed millions in successive plagues in Eurasia over the millennia, leaving only the immune behind, and these were unleashed on a virgin population.
Example • Francisco Pizarro with less than 200 soldiers was able to capture the Inca emperor in the face of it’s 80,000 strong army, and bring the Inca empire to an end.
Example • More moving, perhaps, is the casually mentioned fact that whole civilizations in the Mississippi basin were wiped out by smallpox, decades before the Europeans carriers of the disease arrived there and wondered at the cities that were left deserted.
Example • At a later period during the conquest of the North American continent, the European combatants intentionally distributed smallpox infected blankets to the native population.
Conquest Because of the decided advantage afforded them, European cultures have spread their dominance throughout the planet. • The British Empire (perhaps the greatest) • French, German and Dutch Colonialism • American Expansionism
The Saga Continues Even Now… The Middle-East
But suppose God is black? What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response? ROBERT F. KENNEDY
"I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse." -- Mark Twain
