Writer's Block: Free your mind

[stormkeeper_lovedoris]

[Error: unknown template qotd]

In college, I had a history professor from Africa and he had a perspective on this. He said that racism was invented. Slaves originally came largely from Eastern Europe (the word "slave" is dervived from "Slav", and Slavic people are European). Eventually it became more profitable to get slaves from Africa. Then, Professor Yeboah-Sampong said, racism developed as a result of the desire to justify the African slave trade. Because racism was made by society, it can be undone.

I'm an optimist at heart so I tend to agree with him.

Comments

[denisia.livejournal.com]

I hope it's okay to disagree a bit here. I disagree completely with your professor's account of history and the origins of racism. Many ancient and middle age societies, including the Celts, Romans, Egyptians, Babylonians and Phoenecians, among others, had slaves from various places, excluded people and stripped rights based on race, and left extremely racist comments and art in their history (for instance here's a set of sandals from King Tut's tomb. The sandals depict the King's enemies--black Africans and Asians--and they're painted on the shoes so he can trample them (http://heritage-key.com/egypt/sandals-enemy-figures)). Jews (considered a different ethnicity) were forced into ghettos as far back as the Middle Ages. The Japanese enslaved other Japanese around the same time. The slave trade in the Arab world went on for a good thousand years. And nobody ever really felt a need to justify slavery; it was a harsh reality that if your country lost a war or was invaded, your people might be massacred and/or enslaved because there wasn't anyone to disagree with it. So thinking that racism was developed just to justify the African slave trade is a bit far off and absurd(your professor's view, not yours, I know).

I'm not saying any of this to debate or argue, so please don't take it that way...it's just that I felt the need to comment about how off I thought your professor's view was.

I do agree that it's a manmade societal construct in that it's unfortunately always been accepted that societies denigrate those they consider 'others'. And one that we can stop, hopefully. This song from South Pacific sums it up for me. http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/southpacific/youvegottobecarefullytaught.htm

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught

Cable:
You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught

(and sorry I edited this post about a million times!)

[stormkpr.livejournal.com]

(and sorry I edited this post about a million times!)


I was kinda excited when I logged into my email this morning at the number of new emails I had. Then I saw that most of them were edits to replies - lol! Just kidding, feel free to edit - and to disagree - as much as you want.

Interesting the examples you give above. But it does sure sound like that wherever the slaves were coming from, people felt the need to hate them and bash them. So to me it follows that when the African slave trade picked up then racism and racist idealogy intensified extremely. Not that it didn't exist before but that this intensified it.

[denisia.livejournal.com]

*nods* We can disagree on this. I very strongly feel that racism isn't confined to animosity between any two specific groups; and it's really not about justifying slavery. Racism's been widespread since people stood upright, and it's always been a way to denigrate 'others' of different religious/ethnic/national origins. For instance if you look at the history of anti-Irish racism, and look at the texts people were writing and widely distributing as far back as the Middle Ages you can find the exact same racist ideas, word for word, that were used for Africans. Even down to the idea that the Irish had a head shape that made them inferior.

Up until the Enlightenment slavery was commonplace all over the world and every single ethnic group was enslaved and/or ostracised at one time or another. Nobody felt a need to explain or justify it, it was unfortunately how things were. The African slave trade was actually probably the first one that people really protested against, because the age of Enlightenment happened halfway through it. People started reading, thinking more for themselves, breaking away from the church and respecting the humanity of others...but at the same time they were saying slavery was bad, there wasn't a lot said about the massacres of Native Americans, the way Coptic Egyptians were tortured for being Coptic and or the way the Irish starved to death during the potato famine.

It's an interesting discussion, but I think we can both agree that racism sucks, regardless of where or who it's against. :)