This is part two of “Clarity in Our Use of the Term Racism.” Looking more concretely at historical events and developments, and paying specific attention to the period from about the mid 1400s to the early 1800s, some key developments were: the defeat of the Africans and Arabs in Spain, which had been ruled by them for at least 800 years; Europeans’ contact with the Western and Southern coasts of Africa in particular; Cristóbal Colón’s – Christopher Columbus – failed effort to sail to the East Indies, resulting in his blundering into the Caribbean. These events and others combined to form a scenario in which Spain, Portugal, France, England and other European countries, that were at the forefront of efforts to enslave people and rob natural resources in Africa and the so called “New World,” could feel confident and powerful.
But then we know that several 100 years before this period, the Greeks and then the Romans had felt confident and powerful. In this earlier period, though, there isn’t any apparent evidence of a sense of power and confidence based on, or intermeshed with, “whiteness.” There isn’t apparent evidence of a view by Greeks, Romans or other Europeans, of Africans being inferior or loathsome because of their “Blackness.” Consider that the Greek historian Eroticus, who visited Egypt, or Kemet, in about 443 BCE, gave credit to Kemet for introducing geometry, a number of religious/spiritual concepts, and other knowledge to Greece. He described the people of Kemet, along with the Ethiopians, as having dark skin and wooly hair. People who believe they are superior to certain other people are not quick or likely to give them credit for important accomplishments, nor quick or likely to cite them as a source for aspects of their own important accomplishments.
So, how did “race” enter the picture? One thing we know about Cristóbal Colón’s journeys to the Caribbean is that the people who were already there were not European/Caucasian. When the Spanish conquistadors, Pizarro and Cortez, ran into the Incas in Peru and the Aztecs in Mexico, respectively, they were seeing people who were not European, who did not look like them. When a group of English sent by Sir Walter Raleigh to Roanoke Island in 1584, landed, they too saw people who did not look like them. In another part of the world, on the African continent, there was a parallel situation. Whether it was the Dutch arriving in Southern Africa, meeting the Khoisan people and establishing the Dutch East India Company; the French in West African countries like Dahomey, what is now called Guinea; the British in Kenya and Eastern Africa, generally, these Europeans were encountering “the Black” people who did not look like them. These various groups of Europeans who stepped into the shores of the Americas, as well as those who stepped onto the shores of the African continent, all encountered people with brown skin, from the lighter shades of the natives of the Americas to the darker shades of the natives of Africa. They encountered people who not only did not look like them, but dressed differently, spoke languages they had no familiarity with, followed deity related belief systems, and practiced rites that they didn’t understand, and had sets of values that were often very different from those prevalent in Europe.
But there is something else and more. The Spanish, French, English, Dutch and other European groups who came to the lands that would come to be called the Americas, and went to the lands of the African continent during the period from the near 1400s to the 1800s and beyond, typically did not do so as respectful visitors. Upon seeing their hosts, they typically did not have the attitude of guests humbly seeking welcome in the homes of others. These so called explorers, and such, arrived at their destinations, as well as places they ran into by chance, with objectives of claiming territory for the respective governments, finding and commandeering gold, silver, spices, etc.; capturing Native people, so called infidels, pagans, savages and so forth, as prizes to show off to their sponsors at home. And they set about to realize these objectives on behalf of not only their own governments, but also Popes, Bishops and other officials of the Roman Catholic and other Christian churches, as well as private companies. That’s the end of part two.
These commentaries are recorded by Noel Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
