Wednesday, June 3, 2015

What came first slavery or racism?

Of course, there was slavery in some parts of the world
before there was racism.  The Romans took slaves who were not distinguishable by their
race.  They were not seen as racial inferiors, they were just people who had been
defeated in battle.


Assuming that you are asking about
race-based slavery, there is no definitive way to say.  Scholars often argue that the
two grew together and reinforced one another.  When Europeans first came into contact
with black Africans, they would have seen them as inferior even without them being
enslaved.  They would have seen the Africans' lack of technology and believed them to be
inferior.  If this is racism, it probably came
first.


However, really systematized racism's existence was
encouraged by slavery.  There was a need to justify the enslavement of a whole race.  
This would have made it important to create an ideology of race that held that blacks
were naturally inferior.


So, slavery in some forms has
existed since before racism did.  Racial slavery, though, developed along with
racism.

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