I think I usually understand the motivation behind the racism. I disagree with it and I oppose it, but at least I think I can explain it to myself that “ok I guess this is happening in their heads, that’s why they act like that”. But this … just always blows my mind. Like what, you can’t use the same sink as a black man? Do you think that black people has a lepper or something? What the hell is your problem man?
The settler-colonists and European slavers began with leveraging a small technological gap with African states in order to start the slave trade, which was effectively nonexistent prior to European contact. They would trade goods African states could not yet produce near exclusively for slaves, which began the underdevelopment of Africa. As the slave trade emerged, so too did the need for justification. See Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa for an excellent overview of this history.
This is what began the systemic dehumanization of Africans and indigenous peoples, alongside the fraternity among European nations. Racism emerged because it needed to in order to justify the existing economic reality of chattel slavery and genocide in those participating in it. In other words, the way we produce and distribute, the way we labor, the way we exist socially, determines our consciousness. Racism is not human nature inherently.
Human nature is malleable, and therefore a better, kinder world is possible. Humanity is not doomed to endless racism and brutality for eternity.
A similar process happened with women. Slowly marginalized and legislated against until public bathrooms were all men’s in the 1800s because women would never need to be out of the home long enough to need one.
Yep! Great point. Women were (and are) used for unpaid domestic labor, but this labor is absolutely socially necessary. In this way, the nuclear family arose as a way for capitalists to avoid paying for domestic labor, where the wage of the man was essentially the social cost of reproducing a family. Women were made dependent, and entire families created in such a fashion as to be the most profitable for capitalists.
Even before the advent of the nuclear family or even modern capitalism the idea of women’s autonomy was viciously purged from European society over the course of a couple hundred years. I
In the early 1300s there were women becoming physicians, owning their own land, and beginning to to accumulate personal wealth. By the end of the 1300s they were being persecuted and hunted as witches, and France had functionally legalized the rape of proletariat women.
Caliban and the Witch by Federici, is a really neat book exploring gender and family structures during the primitive accumulation of capital. It’s a little dated, but still a really interesting read.
Yep, excellent expansion! I by no means meant to minimize the historical devastation of women’s rights, I was specifically meaning the context of the 19th and 20th centuries with that comment. Women’s history is far more complex than just that period.
I am agreeing with most of that but calling slave trade in Africa “effectively nonexistent”, before the Europeans is misleading at best. It was orders of magnitude smaller, as Europe basically industrialised slave trade but it was far from an alien concept and the European slave trade was also employing older systems to its end.
Chattel slavery, as a core component of African economies, did not exist. There was slavery, but it was not inherited, not a major aspect of the economy, and not a motivating factor for development. When Europeans came to Africa, they found States that in many ways put European ones to shame. Benin shocked European explorers with its high culture and developement.
Europe, however, had begun the exponential growth that comes with capitalism. This created industrialized production, more advanced technology, and thus a monopoly on these key goods that could give African States leverage over their neighbors. Europeans took advantage of this, and required slaves in return. Those who resisted were met with naval cannons and European guns.
The reason for this was to aid with the massive labor required for all of the land Europe was stealing in the Americas. Agricultural products needed labor. African countries were made dependent on export of human lives. This created demographic crises and stunted development, after all, how can you develop when your economy isn’t focused on productivity but instead on warring with neighbors and exporting your own people? This widened the gap, which then was taken advantage of further by Europeans, resulting in colonialism.
The point isn’t that slavery did not exist at all. The point is that it was extremely minor, and not at all the focus of African economies until European capitalists established contact, and forced it if not by advanced technology to trade, then by gun and cannon. Europe even refused to share how to create guns, as this way they could control the flow of weaponry, and de-fang resistance. They controlled who had guns, for what reasons, and to what extent. Replacement parts were monopolized, creating dependence.
This is the ball and chain put around African necks, and what began the balkanization of what were, until Europe’s involvement, states that rivaled those of Europe. This is the history European settlers wiped away, trying to manufacture a narrative of “civilizing savages.” This is what Walter Rodney debunked.
A lot of qualifiers there. Slave trade did exist before. Of course it was different much smaller, economically much less significant. Europeans arguably did not just industrialise it though but made it substantially worse (inheritable, racism, industrial style exploitation etc). They did not invent slave trade however.
Slaves were largely taken from conquered enemies, there was not an industry of taking and gathering slaves. African economies were instead more feudal and communalistic, rather than slave-based. It wasn’t until the arrival of the Europeans that slaves became as important as they did for gaining technology and avoiding invasion by the Europeans, and thus the slave trade proper was created. There existed proto-slave trade formations that grew vastly.
I think you’re getting a bit hooked on how I’m wording things. Am I denying the existence of anyone buying a slave ever before the Europeans arrived? No. Am I denying that there was a real slave trade, an economy of slavery, before the Europeans arrived? Yes.
I think this argument is missing the nuanced component where the continent of Africa experienced this brief moment between the fall of the roman empire and the rise of the european slave trade where Africa wasn’t being raped by Europe. As i understand my slavery history the early-middle roman empire got the ball rolling a few thousand years ago, granted to nothing near the scale of modern European exploitation
Disgust is a far more dangerous mass emotion than fear or hatred. Disgust is what drove the nazis to use try to ‘exterminate’ the jewish people and other of their undesirables.
I think I usually understand the motivation behind the racism. I disagree with it and I oppose it, but at least I think I can explain it to myself that “ok I guess this is happening in their heads, that’s why they act like that”. But this … just always blows my mind. Like what, you can’t use the same sink as a black man? Do you think that black people has a lepper or something? What the hell is your problem man?
You are underestimating how racist people were (and some still are). To them it would be like drinking from their dog’s water bowl
I’ve literally watched my racist aunt feed her dog off the same fork she was eating with.
The settler-colonists and European slavers began with leveraging a small technological gap with African states in order to start the slave trade, which was effectively nonexistent prior to European contact. They would trade goods African states could not yet produce near exclusively for slaves, which began the underdevelopment of Africa. As the slave trade emerged, so too did the need for justification. See Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa for an excellent overview of this history.
This is what began the systemic dehumanization of Africans and indigenous peoples, alongside the fraternity among European nations. Racism emerged because it needed to in order to justify the existing economic reality of chattel slavery and genocide in those participating in it. In other words, the way we produce and distribute, the way we labor, the way we exist socially, determines our consciousness. Racism is not human nature inherently.
Human nature is malleable, and therefore a better, kinder world is possible. Humanity is not doomed to endless racism and brutality for eternity.
A similar process happened with women. Slowly marginalized and legislated against until public bathrooms were all men’s in the 1800s because women would never need to be out of the home long enough to need one.
Yep! Great point. Women were (and are) used for unpaid domestic labor, but this labor is absolutely socially necessary. In this way, the nuclear family arose as a way for capitalists to avoid paying for domestic labor, where the wage of the man was essentially the social cost of reproducing a family. Women were made dependent, and entire families created in such a fashion as to be the most profitable for capitalists.
Even before the advent of the nuclear family or even modern capitalism the idea of women’s autonomy was viciously purged from European society over the course of a couple hundred years. I
In the early 1300s there were women becoming physicians, owning their own land, and beginning to to accumulate personal wealth. By the end of the 1300s they were being persecuted and hunted as witches, and France had functionally legalized the rape of proletariat women.
Caliban and the Witch by Federici, is a really neat book exploring gender and family structures during the primitive accumulation of capital. It’s a little dated, but still a really interesting read.
Yep, excellent expansion! I by no means meant to minimize the historical devastation of women’s rights, I was specifically meaning the context of the 19th and 20th centuries with that comment. Women’s history is far more complex than just that period.
Didn’t mean to imply you minimized anything, just adding onto a good point.
I am agreeing with most of that but calling slave trade in Africa “effectively nonexistent”, before the Europeans is misleading at best. It was orders of magnitude smaller, as Europe basically industrialised slave trade but it was far from an alien concept and the European slave trade was also employing older systems to its end.
Chattel slavery, as a core component of African economies, did not exist. There was slavery, but it was not inherited, not a major aspect of the economy, and not a motivating factor for development. When Europeans came to Africa, they found States that in many ways put European ones to shame. Benin shocked European explorers with its high culture and developement.
Europe, however, had begun the exponential growth that comes with capitalism. This created industrialized production, more advanced technology, and thus a monopoly on these key goods that could give African States leverage over their neighbors. Europeans took advantage of this, and required slaves in return. Those who resisted were met with naval cannons and European guns.
The reason for this was to aid with the massive labor required for all of the land Europe was stealing in the Americas. Agricultural products needed labor. African countries were made dependent on export of human lives. This created demographic crises and stunted development, after all, how can you develop when your economy isn’t focused on productivity but instead on warring with neighbors and exporting your own people? This widened the gap, which then was taken advantage of further by Europeans, resulting in colonialism.
The point isn’t that slavery did not exist at all. The point is that it was extremely minor, and not at all the focus of African economies until European capitalists established contact, and forced it if not by advanced technology to trade, then by gun and cannon. Europe even refused to share how to create guns, as this way they could control the flow of weaponry, and de-fang resistance. They controlled who had guns, for what reasons, and to what extent. Replacement parts were monopolized, creating dependence.
This is the ball and chain put around African necks, and what began the balkanization of what were, until Europe’s involvement, states that rivaled those of Europe. This is the history European settlers wiped away, trying to manufacture a narrative of “civilizing savages.” This is what Walter Rodney debunked.
A lot of qualifiers there. Slave trade did exist before. Of course it was different much smaller, economically much less significant. Europeans arguably did not just industrialise it though but made it substantially worse (inheritable, racism, industrial style exploitation etc). They did not invent slave trade however.
The slave trade practically did not exist. Slavery did, but it was not an industry. This is why it dramatically expanded.
Slave trade did exist. Where there are slaves there is usually slave trade.
Slaves were largely taken from conquered enemies, there was not an industry of taking and gathering slaves. African economies were instead more feudal and communalistic, rather than slave-based. It wasn’t until the arrival of the Europeans that slaves became as important as they did for gaining technology and avoiding invasion by the Europeans, and thus the slave trade proper was created. There existed proto-slave trade formations that grew vastly.
I think you’re getting a bit hooked on how I’m wording things. Am I denying the existence of anyone buying a slave ever before the Europeans arrived? No. Am I denying that there was a real slave trade, an economy of slavery, before the Europeans arrived? Yes.
I think this argument is missing the nuanced component where the continent of Africa experienced this brief moment between the fall of the roman empire and the rise of the european slave trade where Africa wasn’t being raped by Europe. As i understand my slavery history the early-middle roman empire got the ball rolling a few thousand years ago, granted to nothing near the scale of modern European exploitation
Disgust is a far more dangerous mass emotion than fear or hatred. Disgust is what drove the nazis to use try to ‘exterminate’ the jewish people and other of their undesirables.
It’s about dehumanization. That was the point.
The wages of whiteness. They feel good about themselves so long as black people are under them.
It’s the conservatism “there must be outgroups”
The cruelty is and always has been the point. They want you to feel less than.