LogFAQs > #882214402

Incidentally, now that I think of it, it's worth noting that a lot of our assumptions about "race" are actually pretty modern. Historical anthropologists are generally quick to point out that a lot of past cultures (like, for instance, the Roman Empire, the Persians, etc.) had almost no hangups about race at all. Because they always found other reasons to hate other people. Their "outsiders" weren't the people with different skin color, it was the people who lived in different cultural realities, or the people who worshiped different gods, or the people who had a lot of neat stuff so you decided to march into their village and kill them so you could take it.

Race as the defining characteristic of "otherness" sort of arose more as the product of globalization - as cultures and economies started to homogenize, the visual context clues became more useful for defining "other-ness" than more mental or social traits. Especially when there was an overwhelming drive to give an overarching cultural identity to groups that would otherwise view each other as the "other" (ie, the coalescing of most European nations into discreet socio-political entities).

Race is just the trendy modern reason to hate. We'll move on to something new soon enough (or maybe we're already starting to make that shift, all things considered).


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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