I think racism is fundamentally a modern term and it is an odd fit to assign it to 18th Century British colonists. Would you assign it to ancient Greeks (who would certainly qualify if transported to the modern world)?
Replies
It is modern: Spain’s treatment of conversos in the 16th century is probably the first appearance of racism as we understand it now.
aug 18, 2025, 10:58 pm • 1 0 • view
aug 18, 2025, 11:00 pm • 0 0 • view
Declaration published in 1776. The 1777 edition of Hume’s “Of National Characters” had this to say (in fact the essay had first been published in 1748):
aug 18, 2025, 11:10 pm • 1 0 • view
aug 18, 2025, 11:11 pm • 1 0 • view
Contemporary with the Declaration, and in the work of an author who was carefully read by *its* author, we find as clear a statement of modern racism as anyone could want.
aug 18, 2025, 11:18 pm • 2 0 • view
Wow, that is actually extremely crass...
aug 19, 2025, 12:06 am • 1 0 • view
Yes. For some context, there’s:
aug 19, 2025, 1:08 am • 0 0 • view
aug 19, 2025, 1:12 am • 0 0 • view
As for Francis Williams:
aug 19, 2025, 1:13 am • 0 0 • view
aug 19, 2025, 1:16 am • 0 0 • view
Pretty sure they held themselves to be inherently better than other, non-greek speaking (and certainly different looking) people. So baseline, yeah, definitely racist (assuming what I said is true), but course, quality wise it would look different to today's racism is what you're saying I guess?
aug 19, 2025, 12:03 am • 0 0 • view
Idk I think it makes good sense to assign that label to the people who created the racial categorizations and the scientific justification for colonialism and white supremacy
aug 18, 2025, 10:45 pm • 6 0 • view
Sorry that was the predominant intellectual milieu the founders were swimming in
aug 18, 2025, 10:48 pm • 0 0 • view
Did they, though? The categorizations go way WAY farther back than the 18th century. Probably to the dawn of civilization to be honest. The Greeks talked about their slaves in very familiar terms to how the English did in colonial era.
aug 18, 2025, 10:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Sorry to say this, but you make the impression of not really knowing what you're talking about - so probably worth reading up a little before returning to the subject ?
aug 19, 2025, 12:08 am • 1 0 • view
What? No they didn’t. Slavery in Ancient Greece and Rome wasn’t racialized and slaves weren’t considered subhumans. They were largely captives of war or people who couldn’t pay their debts, and their descendants.
aug 18, 2025, 11:01 pm • 5 0 • view
Modern racial classifications are called that because they’re modern.
aug 18, 2025, 11:02 pm • 2 0 • view
The Romans thought Greek slaves were particularly valuable as tutors because of their intellectual culture!
aug 18, 2025, 11:03 pm • 1 0 • view
Right. Chattel slavery was an entirely new invention as were the racial categories and the way natural sciences were directed toward the job. Linnaeus tried to define the races using the newly developed taxonomic standards he had just created
aug 18, 2025, 11:09 pm • 0 0 • view
Chattel slavery is what the Greeks and Romans practiced too
aug 18, 2025, 11:44 pm • 0 0 • view
People as property without rights. But it was considered something that could be done to anyone under the right circumstances, not an inherent biological state of subservience.
aug 18, 2025, 11:45 pm • 0 0 • view
Iirc the distinguishing feature was not property without rights but that chattel slavery was hereditary. I don’t believe that was part of ancient forms
aug 18, 2025, 11:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Not true. Even Aristotle wrote that slaves were subhuman.
aug 18, 2025, 11:49 pm • 0 0 • view
The fact that he sees a problem here at all (how can one be a master and another a slave if they’re both responsive to reason and capable of fine action?) is your clue that he almost certainly doesn’t think of slaves as subhuman in the way modern slavers and racists sometimes did.
aug 19, 2025, 12:03 am • 1 0 • view
Charles Carroll’s “The Negro a Beast” is probably a useful contrast case
aug 19, 2025, 12:06 am • 1 0 • view
“Slave” was a social status rather than an inherent nature. If your ship got attacked by pirates you had a real good chance of being sold into slavery unless you were worth a random.
aug 19, 2025, 12:16 am • 0 0 • view
You’re engaging in a very frustrating white supremacism strategy to minimize colonialism and slavery. Hopefully that’s unintentional
aug 18, 2025, 11:54 pm • 2 0 • view
Aristotle was European. I’m arguing he (and almost everyone else born before about about 1900) was by modern definition racist and accepted subhuman categorization of the “other” as not immoral. And I’m saying that makes the word close to meaningless when applied historically.
aug 19, 2025, 12:00 am • 0 0 • view
aug 19, 2025, 2:03 am • 0 0 • view
OF COURSE slaves themselves were dehumanized to greater or lesser degree, but the notion that that entire racial populations were in a natural state of slavery did not exist. These were cosmopolitan societies - especially Rome.
aug 19, 2025, 12:09 am • 1 0 • view
Pretty much everything you said was wrong. Congrats
aug 19, 2025, 12:02 am • 0 0 • view
This is incorrect. This book gives a thorough historical overview of the changes in Western conceptions of race from Ancient Greece to the modern day:
aug 19, 2025, 12:18 am • 0 0 • view
They don’t go back to the dawn of civilization at all, they were largely a product of the enlightenment.
aug 18, 2025, 10:55 pm • 2 0 • view
The Greeks slaves were largely other Greeks tho
aug 19, 2025, 1:19 am • 0 0 • view
Ancient Greece is another matter, but modern concepts of race had emerged by the late 18th century, precisely because of slavery colonialism, and the need to codify different racial castes in law. The founders were absolutely racists in the modern sense.
aug 18, 2025, 10:26 pm • 9 0 • view
Well sure. But to my mind, any term that encompasses a 1st C Roman emperor, a 13th C Ife king in Nigeria, Benjamin Franklin, and Laura Loomer just has no meaning.
aug 18, 2025, 10:51 pm • 0 0 • view
Ben Franklin and Laura Loomer are both American figures on the modern era, you can draw comparisons with them.
aug 18, 2025, 11:27 pm • 0 0 • view
So you believe the words “human”, “person”, “individual”, “historical figure”, etc. have no meaning?
aug 18, 2025, 11:05 pm • 3 0 • view
Look man, if you’re just gonna make up stuff to argue with, why are you dragging other people into it?
aug 18, 2025, 10:53 pm • 1 0 • view
What did I make up?
aug 18, 2025, 10:55 pm • 0 0 • view
Hunter-gatherer is a modern concept too. Doesn't mean our ancestors weren't hunter-gatherers.
aug 19, 2025, 1:02 pm • 0 0 • view
Yes but not everybody through history was a hunter-gatherer. The word had a meaning because some were and some weren’t.
aug 19, 2025, 1:37 pm • 0 0 • view
If you’re truly interested, there’s loads of scholarship on this. I hope an expert will recommend the best books for non-academics. A massive PR campaign to dehumanize people based on skin color was necessary for chattel slavery to thrive. Hitler did the same to Jews as Trump is doing to immigrants.
aug 18, 2025, 10:55 pm • 3 0 • view