How did racism start?

[Soubriquet]

Just watching American Horror Story:Coven and seeing how they react to black people just made me ponder it. I know it’s a fiction story, but I also know people used to act like that and worse.

How did racism originally start? I mean, what made white people think they were the superior species?

Erm, you're obviously right that there has always been slavery and brutal treatment of slaves. However, the European colonisers turned it into an industry in a way that the Romans and Vikings never dreamt of.

The whole "well other people did it first so actually you can't judge the transatlantic slave trade" argument is frankly ridiculous. Racism is the direct result of the transatlantic slave trade, as it enabled the slave traders & owners to feel they were acting correctly and justly, and continue to treat human beings like animals in the belief that actually they were animals.

The Empire podcast covers this in excellent detail

It starts really young, and is a partially innate reaction too.

Up to 9 months, a baby will show equal reactions to a human stranger of any race. At 9 months, they show a marked positive preference for their own family race or races.

It's not dissimilar to innate reactions to unkempt hair (poor nutrition, grooming), disfigurements and disabilities (my birthmark looks like a wound/indicator of disease) etc.

I don't disagree on the societal stuff (most of my history degree covered it in depth), but I think it's foolish to pretend otherwise than that all races carry these innate predilections that are basic survival mechanisms.

It's a case of "know thy enemy", and if we don't include natural human psychology in our answers to racism, then we throw away part of the solution.

The Spartans were famously racist and elitist. You could only be a 'real' Spartan if both your parents were from Sparta and you could meet their tough standards of approval.

Everyone else was lesser. Their treatment of the Helots was awful and definitely amounted to racism. The disdain they treated the other Greek City states was very evident even 2,000 years on.

Maybe the modern classification of racism is directly linked to the slave trade, but the roots have been around for eons. The 'othering' of someone not like you that you perceive to be lesser than you and your poor treatment of them as a result.

It was black people because slavery had been more or less done away with in Europe but was still practiced in Africa. So enterprising Europeans could sail to Africa, buy slaves and take them to the Americas to work on the plantations.

It all started as a money making exercise, but the slave owners (and broader society) came to justify it by convincing themselves that black people were inferior and couldn't be trusted to run their own lives. Therefore it was the natural order for them to be owned and controlled by white people.

OP, If you're referring to racism that concerns black and brown skinned people from Africa and The Caribbean then I think that the answer from Soozikinzii is spot on. But if you're interested in the origin of all racism, obviously racism didn't start with European slave owners just as anti-semitism didn't start with HItler, but it's still basically the same process. And it may even be that not all slavery is racist - I read somewhere that the Romans were 'equal opportunity enslavers' for example - they did not limit their enslavement to one type of people, place or race. Rather than the colour of peoples' skin being the determining factor for racism, I think the need to 'other' people in some way and make them seem inferior, actually led to peoples' skin colour and physiognomy being a useful way to denote this - rather than the other way round. An interesting example being the history of the two hundred odd year period of Russian history referred to as the Mongol Yoke and considered horrific and humiliating (in Russia), led to the belief that barbaric, primitive Asians originated in Mongolia, and were underdeveloped and physically and mentally deficient and compared to apes. The fact that these now, so called, 'inferior' and deficient people had conquered this 'western' nation seemed lost on them - or maybe made them feel even more hatred. This in turn would later pave the way for the now outdated racial classifications (for example Mongoloid). Had Genghis Khan, and his Mongol army, looked exactly the same as the Russians they invaded, the racial othering of them would have been more difficult.
Maybe the modern classification of racism is directly linked to the slave trade, but the roots have been around for eons - yes, exactly.

I thought it was African kings who turned it into an industry, sending castrated slaves to the east (apparently going on for a long time) before the triangle trade commenced to the west. I’d heard that online. Recently, but have no knowledge of its accurate.

Thankfull that it was the Uk who led the way on its abolition.

There is a (v v old) song by Bob Dylan, that makes sense to me about racism in America. It's called Only A Pawn In Their Game.

there's bits of it (and I slightly paraphase) that says
*The poor white man is used by them all like a tool. you got more than the blacks, don't complain, you're better than t hem, you've been born with white skin, they explain. And the negros name, is used, it is plain for the politicians gam e.

And

• He's taught in his school that the laws are with him, to protect his white skin, so he never thinks straight , about the state that he's in. But it ain't him to blame.

So to me, modern racism in America and maybe elsewhere, is about keeping folk in their place, black or white. Keep the white folk happy by giving them someone to look down on, however misguided that is. So people with power, only have to fight one enemy, black people. As opposed to fighting a far bigger movement, those with little power.

Black people were more resistant to malaria, which was endemic both in the areas they were being transported to, and in their native West Africa. They were a replacement for their Irish and poor British "indentured" labourers who where put to work there first, and promptly dropped dead in droves as they were more vulnerable to the disease.

The Bible (a Middle Eastern religion very different to the indigenous European belief system btw) taught that black people were inherently lesser than other humans (the Curse of Ham), and this was used as an excuse to enslave them.

Arab slave traders had been raiding the coasts of Europe (primarily for female sex slaves - that's polygamy for you) for centuries, and Europeans often went to North Africa to ransom them. This meant they knew where to get black slaves from as the North Markets were full of them.

So there's the need, the market and the excuse. Ding!

As for racism being solely a white on black thing - some of you need to travel more.

12 million Africans were transported via the transatlantic slave trade. That's 12,000,000. How many castrated slaves did African kings send to the east? I don't know but will take a stab at "considerably fewer than 12 million".

The whole "ah but the UK led the way in abolishing it!" Is also a very handwashy way of thinking. British people turned slavery into the foundation of their economy; the fact that they eventually stopped it, should not clear their conscience...

There was classism in the past before racism - hence people who stole a loaf of bread because they were starving were thrown in jail- no empathy -rich people were good, god fearing and hard working, the poor were wastrels - still like that in some places.
I do think religion comes into it - God was on your side and what you believed was Right - the savages didn’t believe in this.
The Moors arttacked the infidels (Christians). In the Middle Ages. And today you still get this where one religion is the one that is Right. Other believers are lesser beings.
So there have always been beliefs that one group is superior and not always due to colour.

Racism is very much a developing concept. It originally meant discrimination against people due to the colour of their skin, and as pp said that is linked to the transatlantic slave trade.

Very recently it has begun to include any form of discrimination against the customs of other cultures, with a tension between both taking on the customs of other cultures and not taking on those same customs. That is linked to globalism and enforced acceptance of huge movements of people across the globe.

But discrimination against other customs is as old as culture in humans - you could not have social groupings of different customs living side by side if people had no option to discriminate between the customs they uphold or no. It is not a bad thing when looking at some customs that are discriminatory and unpleasant in themselves.

Could we use reactions to albinism as an example? I’ve never been so shocked as i was watching animals rip another animal apart simply because it lacked pigment - everything else was completely normal. Maybe we’re hard wired to react negatively to this.

It goes back to tribalism.

£££££££

Slaves have value. Slavery is wealth creation. All cultures have enslaved others since the dawn of time.

Thanks for confirming that 12 million is 12,000,000.

Exactly. We are a social species but other social groups are a threat to our resources so we protect our own and attack the others. Self preservation. It's the same in all social animals.

I don't know the stats for the UK, but 1.6% of Americans at the time were involved in the slave trade.

The vast majority of Britons were treated as badly as possible within the law by the same people who were slavers.

One percenters, fucking things up for the rest of us since time immemorial.

Even on this thread you're inadvertently setting 'English' apart from 'British' OP. That in itself is a form of discrimination, just ask anyone from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or any of the British Islands that don't consider themselves English.

It started with human nature.

The very creation of societies and civilisation so many thousands of years ago. As long as there's been 'us' and 'them' and any appreciable physical difference to identify the 'other', there's been racism.
It exists and has existed in pretty much any culture.

You're welcome. As long as you make the argument that "well actually I think you'll find that Brits were only doing what the Blacks had done for centuries, and anyway it was the Brits who abolished slavery" then I will assume that you need a bit of extra help to understand difficult concepts like how big a number 12 million men, women and children represents, and why it's on a completely different scale to everything that went before with the Romans, Vikings, Ottomans and Africans.

People didnt travel so when they did they discovered that people were "not like us". It's a natural reaction to be fearful

Racism came from fear. It still is I suspect ignorance breeds fear

Explaining that 12 million is the same as 12,000,000, followed by that I need to more clearly understand how big a number 12 million is…. It’s quite rude and demeaning.

So I will not engage further keyboard warrior looking for a fight. I will wish you and your incorrect assumptions about me well.