Is Diane Abbott right that only Black people experience racism and other ethnic groups experience prejudice?

No just trying to clarify your points. You said that in the pre-contact medieval period racism was based solely on religion and not skin colour. Since I’ve now clarified you are fully aware that Europe was a multi-ethnic region prior to 1492, can I ask did you really mean that there was no racism at all other than your race=your religion assertion? No racism at all based on ethnicity in all of Europe?

I don’t know what you mean by ‘they weren’t considered white’. It makes no sense.

I know that paleness was considered posh because labouring outside tans the skin, but I don’t think that’s what you mean.

You said the Irish were viewed as “not white” which isn’t correct. Even when they were dehumanised and called white chimpanzees- they retained their whiteness.

No, the working class are not “excluded from whiteness” by being called classist slurs like “chav”. You might as well claim that the classist slur toff is “excluding from whiteness” the rich elite.

Your class doesn’t affect your race. You can’t be “less white” by being poor.

No. There were Africans in Europe as well as people of many races and backgrounds. Pre-contact as in pre-conquest of the Americas.

Do I seem like I would be unaware of the history of African people in Europe? Is this supposed to be some kind of gotcha?

I literally said whiteness is a social construct! That’s the whole damn point of all my posts! I’m not endorsing the idea of whiteness- I’m showing how it was constructed over time. Of course it’s absurd and makes no rational sense. But it also exists.

by the way; the very idea that when I said “become white” people responded by thinking I was saying they therefore were Black exactly illustrates how we automatically see blackness as the opposite pole of whiteness. I never said they were black I said they weren’t considered white, but that gets read as “Black” precisely because of a history that sees Blackness as the “opposite” to white - the idea that underlies anti-Blackness which people are denying exists.

I’m not criticising you for being wordy. I appreciate the time you are taking to explain. It’s the links you provided that I criticise.

Gradually in the US the ( Protestant) Irish “become white” largely in response to the enfranchisement of Africans and the end of enslavement where the Irish are now used to argue for white workers and white enfranchisement over Africans.

I just wanted to clarify that I think the Protestant Scottish/Irish (Presbyterians) who immigrated to America in the early 18th C were not disadvantaged people/the equivalent of black people, but prospered there and were the opposite, WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants).

@Misstache
Quick question, what did you mean by “In the pre-contact medieval period”?

I wonder if you are thinking that before 1492, Europe was 100% white people….

Notice how when I try to summarize shortly, people poke holes because I didn’t write a dissertation. So then I post links and it’s “oh too wordy and academic.” See how you move the goalposts and I can’t win?

Just admit you’re hostile to Black people talking about race.

Irish etc. were never “Black” - Black people existed, were enslaved based on Blackness and dehumanized based on Blackness. Irish didn’t go from “Black to white,” I never said that. I said they “become white” which is much different.

White trash is a classist term that implies some white people are excluded from whiteness - it is both classist and racist together. The term itself uses racial logic - not just trash or even “ghetto,” but WHITE trash indicating that race is central to the term. One becomes “less white” by being poor, “red neck,” “estate,” etc.

Honestly, there’s so much writing on this stuff. It’s not even new or novel.

Every time I give links no one reads them

The two links you gave there are really off putting. They are overly wordy and full of unsubstantiated opinion from the outset. Paying too much heed to that kind of thing, means you can come out with something like this:

“The term “white trash” or its equivalents (chav, etc.) are still used to suggest some white people aren’t truly white.”

And not realise it makes no sense.

I don’t think it is good for the mind to be immersed in academic up-itself theorising.

Kant is the most significant thinker of reason and “universalism.” He’s not just one of many thinkers, he’s absolutely foundational to Enlightenment philosophy. It’s not just “racist commentary” - in fact, many philosophers deny Kant was even racist by the way. Kant is essential to the shift into the idea of universal human reason and his thinking was also entirely underlaid by racist schema. The ideas of Herodotus don’t currently underlie our world. The ideas of the Enlightenment do - comparing the impact of 18th C thought to ancient thought is deflection - we don’t currently have a world that actively divides based on ideas of Athens vs. Sparta. We do have a word still living out the legacy of enslavement and race.

slavery is not the same thing as chattel slavery - slavery existed through history across civilization. The specific laws and social and economic constructions that rendered African slavery generational through Blackness as a mark of inhumanity supported by entire legal constructs (the codification of laws like the Code Noir etc) are much different historically and continue to impact Black people today. Locke specifically writes that a master has “absolute” power over a slave, an important shift in ideas around chattel slavery. That is a philosophical contribution, not just participation in the slave trade.

The whole point is that what qualifies as “white” has never been static - it shifts in response to political and social pressures.

I agree with this because it is proof that race is a social construct and it changes depending on time and place, and this includes not only the definition of what is a race, but of any categories of race that happen to endure for more than a decade. White people- it’s never been an unchanging monolith as to what this means.

As working class troops are increasingly needed for Empire, Scots, Irish, Welsh etc. “become white.”
What I don’t agree with is this concept that races go from “black” to “become white” especially not through being conscripted as cannon fodder! That’s a US race concept inherited from ye bad old days that puts black and white as polar opposites on a spectrum and then we argue over how “white” or “black” a race is or is not. This is a regressive concept of race, it’s not modern in any sense.

The term “white trash” or its equivalents (chav, etc.) are still used to suggest some white people aren’t truly white. No! Those terms show classism, not racism.

Your post is misinformed-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/22/sorry-but-the-irish-were-always-white-and-so-were-the-italians-jews-and-so-on/

Misstache
Locke actually has an important philosophical role in developing chattel slavery. Your link describes his personal involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. It doesn’t say he had a “philosophical role in developing chattel slavery” nor could he because chattel slavery existed thousands of years before he was born.

Race is a concept specifically of the modern world
I don’t agree. Race has been a concept since records began, but because it is a social construct, the specific aspects of race as a concept have changed depending on the time and place you study.

In the pre-contact medieval period, as I explained, “race” is not through colour as such but religion. No. this was not the case at all.

I am not sure why you post Kant. Yes he reflects a lot of the racist views held by the English in the 18th c. but that is it. You’d find much the same genre of racist commentary about other peoples in travel journals by Herodotus (400 BC) or in Tacitus’ writings (75 AD)regarding the Britons, Gauls and Germans.

immediately have people jump in to nitpick as if that makes anti-Black racism not exist

I have been arguing for pages that ‘anti-black’ racism does exist as a specific thing, so I am not guilty as charged.

What I am nitpicking about, is your sweeping statements and the modern lens you are perceiving the past through.

In terms of the Irish, the Irish were not considered “white” in any meaningful way. They were colonized by England, endured genocide, had language and culture wiped out, were often drawn as monkeys like Black people and so on.

in the US, the Irish are initially transported in indentured servitude and there’s many instances of Irish and African people taking common cause and rebelling. Gradually in the US the ( Protestant) Irish “become white” largely in response to the enfranchisement of Africans and the end of enslavement where the Irish are now used to argue for white workers and white enfranchisement over Africans. Whiteness is a gradual construction - Eastern Europeans “become white” when land is granted to farmers in order to encroach on Indigenous lands. As working class troops are increasingly needed for Empire, Scots, Irish, Welsh etc. “become white.” That doesn’t mean there’s no discrimination, it’s that in the late imperial period whiteness becomes an idea - for example, the “white colonies” such as Australia, NZ, Canada, SA, become a political site of discussion with the idea that bringing them “into the fold” will place a bulwark against “racialized people.” The whole point is that what qualifies as “white” has never been static - it shifts in response to political and social pressures. Boer were not “white”in any meaningful sense for the British during the Boer War, for example, nor were the colonies seen as equal (even Anglo Indians were seen as racially tainted and suspect - often suspected of having Indian blood. Part of the obsession of race was detecting and categorizing these signs of race and labelling people.) The legacies of the Irish being seen as “not white” is in terms like “paddy wagon” and yes, the discrimination against Irish in housing, etc. there remained strong anti-colonial and anti-slavery sentiment in Ireland - Frederick Douglass makes a famous speaking tour of Ireland for example.

The term “white trash” or its equivalents (chav, etc.) are still used to suggest some white people aren’t truly white.

But that doesn’t mean anti-Black racism doesn’t exist - in fact, part of the specific function of anti-Black racism is to divide the white working classes from Black people with the idea of convincing white people their allegiance lies with white elites and not with fellow oppressed Black people (at least you, as a deprived white person, can be better than a n——) and share a white identity.

Again, this is shorthand, not a thesis, which I’m not being paid to write on here. I also find it funny that Britain colonized the world, engaged in the slave trade for centuries, yet continues to believe race and racism only exists in the US, and racism and Blackness are imported ideas.

As I said in my message, I wasn’t giving the full history - I explicitly said it was a capsule. And I wasn’t referring to the Ancient world, I began in the early modern period as we were specifically talking about Blackness and the history of anti-Blackness.

I alluded to Aristotle - the Greeks categorized people into citizens, slaves, and foreigners living within Ancient Greece (metics). (Aristotle himself was an immigrant.) Aristotle’s idea of the Barbarian was people who didn’t speak Greek. So whatever the equivalent of “race” was in that world was defined through language and citizenship as well as freedom status. The Romans expanded the notion of global Roman citizenship - it was Germanic people and Britons who were considered “beyond the pale” while there were many people we would now call brown or Black people who were Roman (Augustine when he goes the Rome worries about his provincial accent, not his colour although his mother Monica is what we would now think of as a person of colour.)

In the pre-contact medieval period, as I explained, “race” is not through colour as such but religion. There’s reference for example to the darker skin of Muslims but it’s not the darkness that’s operational but the fact they are Muslim. And yes, obviously there’s Protestant/Catholic conflict - Protestants for example are often compared to Moors as a slur, and Luther in his turn had an explicit hatred of Islam. Throughout all these periods in Europe, Jewish people are “racialized” (there is no comparison in the pre-enlightenment world for “racism” because the notion of race isn’t active, so we are speaking here figuratively in terms of what the equivalent of race would be in a world before race was constructed as we understand it. Race is a concept specifically of the modern world - it comes about specifically in relation to enslavement, colonialization, imperialism, the rise of “reason” etc. and economic changes “back home” in relation to the changes in the working classes, growing enfranchisement, industrial Revolution etc.)

Obviously to trace this fully would take and does take entire books. I’m trying to write this succinctly and explicitly said so, so it’s a bit frustrating to say “this is a very short and capsule history of complex things” and immediately have people jump in to nitpick as if that makes anti-Black racism not exist.

Locke actually has an important philosophical role in developing chattel slavery:

https://www.woldww.net/classes/Modern/Bernasconi&Mann_on_Locke&racism.pdf

Every time I give links no one reads them and just goes on about critical race theory but here is a good article on Kant. This guy is an extremely respected scholar of continental philosophy, not a “critical race theorist” and he’s from the UK:

https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/wp-content/files_mf/rp117_article1_willtherealkantpleasestandup_bernasconi.pdf

Another take:

https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/32380412/millennium-dialogue-libre.pdf?1391547849=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DDecolonising_the_Grounds_of_Ethical_Inqu.pdf&Expires=1682634339&Signature=XdHEDwZn5r5l8JLy-WGEzuAz-lRWPRWVT1JToZBVzhyK68yBlOdURmtXqcTjXF4cDWJjC8THw5a-qzC6sX~6XrupTvWshPcP560vVxiCG8qDhepnTV0klTuJH7j7idwUZP31Du6U68VN0z7VnvbOryAUuzCTfz5O21tH32OFptT-9qLx3zWhb~kctBpoBS3MuCupfd4e~A9r39B4dpnVNYr1~q0RDLJuDxxW5gmiAX-PRRoEjpekjmFke0KhGuqI1bgU-616jMJRC~aD-SZcJ0nnAGCrOlXkUlQR0WOe8zFbm-nWv6yjp1Q39JEr9jlcDk4ssymzhEo8P7aTGU2wbg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA

I haven't RTFT but I would say that Diane Abbot is ignorant in the truest sense of the word. She can't see anything beyond her own experience.

I can remember my grandmother telling me that as far on as the late 40's that guest houses down by the docks in Liverpool -where she lived - had signs on their windows saying "no Irish".

There was considerable prejudice in Liverpool against the Irish and this continued for decades.

any Huguenot caught trying to escape slavery was guilty of treason and executed.

It’s so insane isn’t it? Mind-boggling.

So important to remember the insane things people can do if we don’t nip things in the bud.

Would you like a couple links to historical evidence of the Exodus from Egypt? It includes an Egyptian stele unearthed in Thebes that records the presence of a semi-nomadic people called Israel in Canaan in 1208 BC (100yrs after the current estimate for when the Exodus happened)? 🤓

What did Chaucer say? “Your chickens have come home to roost”

What we have now is a US centric concept of race creeping in to be super-imposed as a form of cultural imperialism.

Indeed @AP5Diva - which is a bit bloomin’ ironic to say the least.

How interesting this discussion has become. I am grateful to you Hathor, AP5 and Misstache for taking it a bit beyond the normal beaten track.

This Christian/non-Christian scheme is also transferred to African people, justifying slavery. As Locke writes, a captive taken in war can be enslaved, and if is also moral to enslave someone who rejects the word of God - to Christianize them. This justifies enslavement.

Many do not realise that to Locke, “non-Christian” included different Christians. He lived in a time period where the French had a practice of enslaving any noncatholics. They’d been doing it to the French Huguenots for decades- they even closed the borders and any Huguenot caught trying to escape slavery was guilty of treason and executed.
https://museeprotestant.org/en/notice/sentenced-to-the-galleys/

Locke was also writing during the Spanish Inquisition, where again, if you a noncatholic you would be enslaved as a heretic to do “penance” for an indefinite time, often the rest of your life (if you recanted your faith as a Protestant- if you didn’t recant you’d be tortured and executed)