Inventing Race

We all know, or we all should know at least, that there is no scientific basis for race. Instead it's a label invented to legally and morally justify the enslavement of black Africans. Here's a short post about how it all started.

Here in The Netherlands we are blessed with two December holidays centered around jolly white saints bringing gifts; On 5 December we celebrate "Sinterklaas" with the white bearded "Saint Nicolas" ("Sint Nikolaas" in Dutch) and at the end of the month we celebrate Christmas as well with "Santa Claus." These are actually one and the same historical person by the way, it's just that Europeans who went to the "New World" united the gifts with the birth of Jesus. Sinterklaas is a children's affair, with children who have behaved well get presents. Each year Sinterklaas arrives on a steamboat from Spain, rides his white horse and is helped by "Zwarte Piet," or "Black Peter" in English. Also there's been a heated debate about the racial stereotype associated with this holiday, you know, the white do-good rich dude with a black servant who does all the hard work of actually delivering the presents and also scaring the kids into behaving.

This story of Sinterklaas is close to the origin of the division of the human race into multiple races. Spain was the first country to designate a "black race" with less than human characteristics, as they were the first to engage in the trans Atlantic slave trade. Back then, Spain and Portugal were predominantly of the Muslim faith, although all monotheistic faiths existed peacefully next to one another. Before the racial distinction between the blacks and the rest, slaves were of all ethnicities and slave-status was mostly a matter of religion, with Muslims only allowed to enslave people from other religions, and Christians only enslaving non Christians. With Muslims inhabiting northern Africa and southern Europe, they encountered humans with much darker skin while traveling further south. The word "negro" is Spanish for "black," and they were the first, according to the below linked video, to use the darker-skinned "negros" for the hardest labor. And Spanish nobility often "employed" a couple of these black people in their household, which is where Saint Nicolas got his helper.

From this black-white division more categories were developed. In the first half of the 19th century doctor Samuel Morton was one of America's most prominent scientists; he is now known as the father of scientific racism. He was known for his collecting of skulls and measuring the volume of their brain-cavities, which he used to put together an entire racial ranking with the 5 races we still use to this day:

Morton’s “craniometry” showed, he claimed, that whites, or “Caucasians,” were the most intelligent of the races. East Asians—Morton used the term “Mongolian”—though “ingenious” and “susceptible of cultivation,” were one step down. Next came Southeast Asians, followed by Native Americans. Blacks, or “Ethiopians,” were at the bottom. In the decades before the Civil War, Morton’s ideas were quickly taken up by the defenders of slavery.
_{source: National Geographic}

Anyhow, watch the below linked video for a detailed look at the origin of the whole race-game.

Thanks so much for visiting my blog and reading my posts dear reader, I appreciate that a lot :-) If you like my content, please consider leaving a comment, upvote or resteem. I'll be back here tomorrow and sincerely hope you'll join me. Until then, stay safe, stay healthy!