A History of Race/ism

Produced By:
Tim McCaskell
Student Program Worker
Equity Department
Toronto District School Board

Why History?

When I mention that racism has a history, people often look confused.  Racism is most often seen as an individual, psychological phenomenon. For example, one often hears that racism is just human nature." Buried in that statement is the implication that since there isn't much we can do about human nature, there isn't much we can do about racism either. According to this point of view, racism is constant and unchanging.

Understanding history is a good antidote to that kind of pessimism.  If we can show that racism has a beginning, then the "human nature" argument obviously doesn't hold much water. And if racism has a beginning, then we can argue that it can have an end.

A second common misconception is that racism is just "old-fashioned" thinking. The farther back you go the worse it was. The more modern and enlightened we become the less racist we will be. This conception is closely related to the idea that  "racism is just ignorance."  In the old days we didn't know much about other people so we believed all sorts of harmful things. Now we know better. So why bother making a fuss? Racism is on its way out.

History tells us that's not the case however. Racism isn't as old as the hills. In fact it’s relatively new. If we understand the conditions that promoted the development of racist ideas and practices, we are in a much better position to make sure they don’t happen again.

A third common argument is that racism is something that happens to people who are new in Canada. The new kid always gets teased. It is unfortunate, even cruel, but its part of life, and it will go away in time, especially when somebody else newer arrives.

You only have to look at the history of how Native People, the first nations to inhabit this continent, were, and continue to be treated, to realize that the argument doesn’t hold.

Finally, there is the belief that racial differences are real. Asian, Black, White or whatever people are different in the way we think, the way we act, in intelligence, in abilities, etc.  It therefore follows that each group should be treated differently.

Understanding a little history can show us how the racial categories that seem so self-evident today were in fact invented and have changed over time.  For instance, in Canada the Irish were once considered a different race, and many British Canadians worried about what Irish immigration would mean for civilization in the colony. When they first arrived, Ukrainians were not considered white by many in Canada. Today they are. First Nations peoples were considered white by the first European settlers.  It was only later on that they began to be described as "red". So if these racial categories keep shifting around so much, and the people in them keep mixing so much, what can you really say about the character of a particular group, except perhaps that we are all human.

So what would we have to do to show that racism has a history? First, we would have to identify a pre-racist worldview, a way of looking at the world that didn’t consider what today we would call "racial" differences, to be important. Secondly, we would need to look at the factors that would undermine such a worldview and lead to the development of racist ideas. Finally, we would need to document some of the debates and arguments that must have occurred as these new ideas about race emerged.

The Ancient World to the End of the Crusades

We therefore need to begin this history by looking at the ancient world. When human societies developed beyond a subsistence economy -- when someone could produce more in a day's work than they needed to survive, forcing others to work -- slavery, became profitable for those who could wield power. Slavery, and forced labour, were common characteristics of the ancient empires that grew up in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, China and the Americas. 

These societies could, by our standards, be quite brutal to slave and free alike. But it is important to note that slavery was not organized around an idea of race. Prisoners of war, criminals, the poor were all enslaved at different times. But with the passing of time they often got their freedom, occasionally even becoming very important people. In Rome for example, the slave of a powerful person often had higher status than someone who was free but poor. And most important, slaves usually differed very little in appearance from their masters.

The Mediterranean was a crossroads of many civilizations, cultures and colours of skin. Egypt, one of the most highly developed regions was often ruled by dark skinned pharaohs. This had profound effects on early European ideas of Africans.

"[I] n the ancient world there were prolonged black-white contacts from an early date; first encounters with blacks frequently involved soldiers or mercenaries, not slaves or so-called savages; initial favourable impressions of blacks were explained and amplified, generation after generation, by poets, historians and philosophers; the central societies developed a positive image of peripheral Nubia as an independent state of considerable, military, political and cultural importance;...black émigrés were not excluded from opportunities available to others of alien extraction, nor were they  handicapped in fundamental social relations..."(Snowden, 1983, p 108)

It wasn't that the Greeks or the Romans didn't notice differences in colour.  They did.  But those differences were generally attributed to differences in climate, "the effects of diverse environments upon a uniform Human Nature..." (Snowden, 1983, p 87). Black people were dark because the burning sun had darkened their skin and frizzed their hair. The pale people of the north were suffering from lack of sunlight.   Particular groups might feel they were superior, but what they felt made them distinct was not their colour.

For these early civilizations what was significant was not skin colour but whether you were "civilized" or "barbarian -- matters of culture, language or religion.  "Civilized" generally meant living in or near a city, and engaging in settled agriculture.  "Barbarian" referred to nomadic peoples who often preyed on the wealth of their more settled rivals.  In the Mediterranean region there were civilized people of all skin colours and barbarians of all skin colours.

Similar attitudes are also found in the early Christian period in spite of religious symbolism that associated the colour black with sin, and white or light with salvation.  It was believed as St Paul said, "God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." (Acts 17:26) (quoted in Montagu, 1971, p 179)

The same attitude is reflected in the Qur'an.

"Oh people! We have created you from a male and a female and we have made you into confederacies and tribes so that you may come to know one another.  The noblest among you in the eyes of God is the most pious, for God is omniscient and well informed." Chapter XLIX, verse 13 (quoted in Lewis, 1990, p 21)

The equality of all believers before God was a central tenet of Islam. Authors like Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), the most prominent Muslim historian of the Middle Ages, like the Greeks before them, continued to attribute human differences to the influence of climate. (Lewis, 1990, p 47)

In these societies it was religious differences which were considered significant, whether you were a Christian, a pagan, or later on, a Muslim.  Once again there were Christians, pagans and Muslims of all colours. 

Nubia or Ethiopia was an important Christian kingdom and its inhabitants were Black. One of the three wise men who visited the Christ child was regularly portrayed as Black in European art, and early theologians made use of the metaphor by contrasting the "blackness” of the Ethiopian skin to the "whiteness" of their souls. Ethiopia was also honoured in Islam for giving refuge to early followers of the Prophet. Racism as we know it did not exist in the ancient world.

But the rivalry between Christianity and Islam did divide the Mediterranean basin.  Christian Europe soon found itself surrounded to the east and the south, cut off from the rest of the world by the empires of its powerful new rival, Islam. Europe's memory of the great Christian civilization in Africa was preserved only in the myth of the kingdom of Prester John.  (In fact, Christian African civilization did continue to thrive to the south of the Islamic empires in Ethiopia, unknown to Europe.)

For Europe in the late middle ages and the Renaissance, the important distinctions were still religious, not racial.  The Crusades, Europe's first major counterattack against the Muslim empires, was justified as an attempt to free the Holy Land from the "infidels," the unfaithful. 

When as many as three million Muslims and 300,000 Jews were expelled from Spain after the defeat of the well-established Muslim kingdoms there, the persecution was religious. (Carew, 1992, p 3)  Muslims and Jews could escape expulsion and persecution by conversion to the religion of the new Catholic conquerors. 

In fact in 1449 when a number of important religious orders in Toledo began to discriminate against the often highly educated converts (conversos) on the grounds that they were not of pure Christian blood, they were sharply repudiated by Pope Nicholas IV. (Davies, 1988, p 10)

Slavery too was linked to religion, not to colour.  While Europeans could enslave Muslim prisoners of war, the main source of slaves for Europe at the time were unchristianized (white skinned) Slavic people captured in raids in Eastern Europe.   These people were indistinguishable from other Europeans in terms of skin colour.  In fact the word derives from “Slav”.

Muslims drew their slaves from the lands immediately north and south of the Islamic world and in the early days of Islamic expansion both white and black slaves were common.  It was only with the rise of European power in the 1600's that the sources of white slaves began to diminish, and slave status began to be associated with Africans and black skin in the Middle East. (Slaves in the Middle East tended to be domestic or military and with a few exceptions slavery never became as economically important in the Islamic world as it was later to become in the Christian Americas.)

In a coffee-table book about this period, The Travels of Marco Polo, (1970), author C.A. Burland praises Polo as a "remarkable man" because during his travels in  "strange lands among alien peoples" he made "few judgements on men and their outlandish customs."  Burland betrays a poor understanding of Europe at the time.   Marco Polo was travelling from an isolated, and by most standards, a backward Europe, to the centres of world civilization in the East. He reacted with amazement and wonder to the scientific, economic and military achievements of the advanced civilizations that greeted him. He was in no position to judge anyone as inferior.   Although Polo continued to believe in his own religion as the true one, he had no notion of European superiority. All the material evidence pointed quite to the contrary.

By the mid 1400s the Portuguese were attempting to break out of the Muslim encirclement by sailing south along the African coast.  Hoping to encourage this activity, in 1455, the Pope authorized the enslavement and seizures of lands and property of "all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and all other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed." (Fredrickson, 1981, p 8) The infidel peoples that the Portuguese found along the African coasts of course, happened to be Black. But the Portuguese were far more interested in getting around Africa to India and China than they were in taking captives. At first, the trade in household slaves was not nearly as profitable as that in silks and spices.

With the Portuguese controlling shipping to the south, an ambitious young mariner with a dubious history managed to convince the Spanish that he could provide them with a direct route to the riches of the East by sailing west. This was not such an outlandish idea at all, since a cursory acquaintance with the classics (at the time finally being translated into modern European languages from Arabic) showed the ancients had already guessed the world was round centuries before. But what Columbus "discovered" was about to make a profound change in how Europeans thought about themselves and the world they lived in.

The "New" World

Columbus sadly miscalculated the circumference of the globe but was lucky enough to bump into the Caribbean, (not even half way to China). The people he found there were obviously not Christians and therefore by European custom and Papal Bull he was free to do whatever he liked. The lands were claimed for Spain and a few captives and a little gold were taken back to be shown off. 

Although the Queen was disappointed that the adventure had failed to provide Spain with a new route to China, a second voyage was financed to search for more gold and to collect the taxes, which were to be levied on her new subjects. The brutality of the Spanish conquerors as they squeezed what gold they could find out of the "Indians" has become legendary. The slaughter, combined with epidemics of diseases for which the "New Word" peoples had no immunity, resulted in the complete extermination of the original inhabitants of many of the islands and perhaps as much as 80 percent of the continental population.

But European arrogance still took a largely religious form. These new people had no rights because they were savage and heathen. (Fredrickson, 1981, p 8).  For example it was necessary for the conquistadors to read "The Requirement" to the peoples they intended to invade.  The version read to a high official of the Inca empire off Tumbes, Peru in 1526 illustrates the European mind-set of the time.

"I, Francisco Pizarro, servant of the high and mighty kings of Castile and Leon, conquerors of barbarian peoples...hereby notify and inform you...that God Our Lord, One and Eternal, created heaven and earth and a man and a woman from whom you and I and all the people of the world are descended... And so I request and require you...to recognize the Church as your Mistress and as governess of the world and universe, and the High Priest, called the Pope, and his Majesty  (King of Spain), as ruler and Lord King...And if you do not do this...with the help of God I shall come mightily against you, and I shall make war on you everywhere...and I shall seize your women and children, and I shall make them slaves...And I insist that the deaths and destruction that result from this will be your fault." (Wright, 1993, p 65-66)

When the native Americans refused to accept such arrogant proclamations, the Spaniards felt free to do their worst, killing and enslaving the "infidels".

The problem with this formulation in the long run was that savages could be civilized and heathens could be Christianized. In 1519, Bartolome de Las Casas, a Dominican priest who had been in the New World since 1502, told Emperor Charles V that the "cruelties more atrocious and unnatural than any recorded" were taking place in America.  He argued that the policy of enslavement, which had been developed to deal with Muslims who refused Christianity, should not be applied to Native Americans who had never heard the gospel. (Fredrickson, 1981, p 8) Las Casas received support from Pope Paul III who in 1537 proclaimed that the Indians were "true men," capable of conversion, and entitled to "liberty and dominion."  On no account should they be reduced to slavery. (Davies, 1988, p 9)

Charles finally moved to abolish Indian slavery in 1542 but there was such a storm of protest in the colonies that the law was repealed the following year. In 1550 Las Casas squared off with the Spanish jurist Sepulveda on the Indian question, in a great debate in the city of Valladolid. Sepulveda maintained that the Indians were  "little men" and quoted Aristotle to suggest that some people were "natural slaves."  Aristotle however had been referring to individual character, not the supposed character of groups. In his attempt to justify Indian slavery Sepulveda was developing something new. He was laying the foundations of modern racism, the idea that some groups of people were naturally different, naturally inferior.  (Williams, 1984, p 36)  (Montagu, 1971, p 179-185) 

Las Casas won the battle with classical Christian arguments that said the Indians had to be converted, not enslaved.  Although the atrocities continued, laws protecting the surviving Indians gradually were put in place in the Spanish dominions.

But Sepulveda's arguments, and the needs of the colonial economy for slave labour, in the long run won the war. Silver and gold from America (180 tons of gold and 17,000 tons of silver reached Europe from America by 1640) had jump-started the European economy and had allowed European merchants to begin to dominate the traditional trading routes from the Far East to Africa. (Blaut, 1993, p 189-190)  A new source of labour was necessary to maintain this flow of wealth.   And such a new source of "heathen" slave labour was already being developed along the west African coast, first by the Portuguese, and then the Dutch, English and French.   

There were clear economic advantages to these new slaves. Unlike the Native Americans they were immune to most European diseases and therefore lasted longer. Thousands of miles from home they were less likely to escape. Finally, they were clearly marked as different, by skin colour and physical features, making it almost impossible for them to hide.  

I will not dwell on the atrocities of the slave trade. Probably 15 million people were kidnapped from Africa, the largest human migration in history. More than a third did not survive the conditions of the trip across the Atlantic, the notorious "middle passage."  The human suffering was incalculable and shocked even the most hardened observers. What is less well known is the importance of this trade to Europe.

"The slave trade...was the basis of British--as well as French and American--mercantile prosperity and the source of industrial expansion...It was the huge profits from the slave and sugar trades which produced much of the capital for Britain's industrial revolution; the ships of Liverpool paid for the factories of Manchester. The technological achievements which were to give the West political and economic dominance over so wide an area of the world were made possible by the miseries of the middle passage." (Segal, 1967, p 45-46)

As the influx of American gold and silver gave Europe the boost it needed to dominate world trade, the trans Atlantic slave trade and the slave-based plantation economies of America became the cornerstone of the developing European economy. But the atrocities of the slave trade ran headfirst into Christian sensibilities. Such slavery also sat uneasily with Christian doctrine about the essential unity of humankind.   

Christian Europe had usually explained the differences between "savages" and  "civilized" people with the theory of degeneration. After the flood, the theory went, Noah's children went off to populate the world. In their wanderings many forgot about God and degenerated into savagery. But all human beings were people, descended from the same father, and all could therefore be Christianized and civilized. How then could continued enslavement be justified once slaves were no longer "heathen" or "savage”?" Unless perhaps they were a different kind of people. 

But how could there be different kinds of people if we were all the descendants of Adam and Eve, and, even more recently, of the family of Noah who were the only people thought to have survived the flood. Creation was estimated to have taken place about 4000 BC and the flood about 2000 BC. It followed that all people on earth were therefore very closely related. 

Shakespeare's Othello written in the early 1600's suggests the changing and confused attitudes toward Africans in British society at the time. On the one hand Othello, who is black, is portrayed as "of a constant loving noble nature," and this mighty general of the armies of the Republic of Venice both commands "white" soldiers and is married to a "white" woman, a situation which would be unthinkable in European literature of a later period. On the other hand, his enemy, the traitorous Iago, uses Othello's features and skin colour to degrade him as he carries out his schemes. (Davidson 1992, p 24) 

Back in America there could be no time for such ambiguity. Slavery was into its second generation. The slaves were becoming Christianized, and as Christians, they were demanding, and sometimes winning their freedom in colonial courts. 

A Maryland law of 1664 was first to put an end to this. It required all "Negroes" to serve lifetime bondage, baptized or not. Three years later the Virginia Assembly proclaimed,  "that the conferring of baptism doth not alter the condition of a person as to his bondage or freedom." Finally, a 1682 Virginia enactment "made slaves of all those arriving whose parentage and native country are not Christian at the time of their first purchase... From this point on, heathen descent rather than actual heathenism was the legal basis for slavery in Virginia."  (Fredrickson, 1981, p 78) 

Keeping the slaves on the plantations was not the only motivation for the developing ideas of race. In America white indentured servants were often little better off than slaves. Many had been vagrants or poor children gathered up by the hundreds in English cities and shipped off to Virginia to work. Others were convicts. Ireland was another major source of "bond labour." In 1652 the English House of Commons provided for "the transporting out of Ireland into foreign parts, such of the Irish as they shall think fit."  It was a period of "licensed kidnapping on a large scale, with the magistrates and officers of the law actively conniving at it."  (Allen, 1994, p 74) 

Once they arrived, these "servants" were sold to masters to pay for their passage.  Once sold they could not marry without their master's permission. They could be separated from their families. They could be whipped for various offenses. Laws were passed calling for the capture and return of runaway servants. 

The nightmare of the colonial elite, so far from the mother country, was that the slaves and poor servants might combine and rebel. That nightmare was realized in 1676 in Bacon's Rebellion, when white frontiersmen along with slaves and servants burned the Virginia capital of Jamestown and put the governor to flight. The rebellion was only put down after 1000 fresh soldiers arrived from England. (Zinn, 1980, p 39) 

The fear of fraternization and rebellion lead to prohibitions on interracial marriage and the declaration that all interracial offspring were illegitimate. Laws provided for stiffer punishments for white servants who ran away in the company of Blacks.   (Zinn, 1980, p 57)   

Finally laws were passed to improve the situation of white servants. When their indenture time was up, masters had to provide them with corn, money, a gun and land. (Zinn, 1980, p 37) Other laws attempted to discourage mixing and communication between Black slaves and Indians.  (Zinn, 1980, p. 54)  Racial divisions among an impoverished and rebellious population became a major form of social control.  (Allen, 1994, p 24)

The Great Chain of Being and the Beginnings of "Racialization"

From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, Christian Europe had explained the natural world using the idea of The Great Chain of Being. According to this belief, God had created all the plants and the animals in a chain from lower to higher.   Lower beings were created to serve higher beings. So animals used plants and ate lesser animals, and "men" reigned over animals just as God reigned over us.   

A major problem that caused no end of difficulty to the theologians and philosophers, were the gaps in the chain. While there were supposedly even gradations among lower animals, the theory called out for something to fill in the chain between people and monkeys. In fact, when the first chimp was brought to Britain in 1699 its human qualities were greatly exaggerated to try and make it fit the bill as a "link" between people and animals. (Gould, 1985, p 263- 280) 

Another Englishman, Dr. William Petty had already come up with a "better" idea.   In a paper to the Royal Society in 1677 he made the case that so called "savages" were a permanently distinct and inferior species of humanity, located between (white) men and animals on the Great Chain. (Fredrickson, 1981, p 11)  Thus it would follow, that they would be destined to be commanded and used by their betters. 

Petty's idea languished for more than 50 years before the great Swedish biologist Charles Linnaeus revived it. The first edition of his General System of Nature (1735) said little about human variation, but the second edition (1740) established four basic colour types in descending order, White Europeans, Red Americans, Yellow Asians and Black Africans. By the 10th edition of his work Linnaeus had attributed character traits to each race. Among other things, "White" Europeans were gentle and inventive, "Red" Americans obstinate, "Yellow" Asians melancholy and covetous, and "Black" Africans indolent and negligent. (Vaughan, 1982, p 945-946)   

The supposed character of these "races" could be used to justify almost anything, including packing thousands of captives below decks in the middle passage.  According to the Bishop of Rochester, speaking to the House of Lords in 1799...

"There is a great peculiarity in the negro constitution: that it is particularly conducive to the health of the negro to be close shut up in foul air. This is death to us white men as we know...but for your negro, it is the reverse. Keep him hot enough he will always do well; and the better, the more you try to stifle him..."(Yeboah, 1988, p 44)

The Enlightenment with its rapid development of a range of different sciences was characterized by a growing racial identification among Europeans. Traditional usage had often referred to the French Race, the English Race etc., where race was synonymous with nationality. Now however, Europeans and those of European descent began increasingly to refer to themselves as "White." Sciences that ranged from cranial measurements, to facial angles, to linguistics claimed to show the physical, intellectual and cultural perfection of Whites as a group. The standards by which all people were to be measured were the proportions of classical Greek sculpture.  The farther one strayed from this model, the less "White" one became. 

As usual, while Europe developed theory, America led in practice. The early colonists had first assumed that the Native Americans were people like themselves.  They explained the slightly darker skin tones of the Americans as the result of their spending so much time unclothed in the sun, and the habit of rubbing bear grease and plant dyes on their skin. "Their swarthiness is the sun's livery, for they are born fair," insisted Massachusetts settler, William Wood in 1634. (Vaughan, 1982, p 929) In both the French and British colonies, therefore, conversion and "civilizing" of the Indians was a major goal. 

But as the natives continued to resist Christianization and fought back against the encroachment of the settlers on their land, that idea gradually gave way to the notion that these too were a different kind of people. They were first described as "tawny" but more and more by the middle 1700's the preferred term was "Red." (Vaughan, 1982)  Linnaeus had simply made common knowledge official. 

As the notion that humanity was divided into races crept in to European thought, (and close behind, that Europeans or "Whites" as they began to think of themselves, were somehow superior), the concern about race mixing and purity began to grow. 

In 1613, Virginia settler John Rolfe had married the Powhatan "princess" Pocahontas, after she was converted to Christianity. Some eighty years later however, in 1691, Virginia banned all forms of inter-racial marriage. Any White person who married "a negro, mulatto or Indian" was liable to permanent banishment from the colony. (Fredrickson, 1981, p 101) Other colonies quickly followed suit. A Carolina law of 1741 "sought to prevent an 'abominable Mixture and spurious Issue' by levying a prohibitive fine against any white person who married 'an Indian, Negro, Mustee, or Mulatto Man or woman, or any Person of mix Blood, to the Third Generation.'" (Vaughan, 1982, p 935) 
This last point is especially important because it marks the beginning of defining a person's race by her or his ancestry, rather than by their actual colour.

This practice soon spread across the colonies and continued after the American war of independence. The rule of 1/4, 1/8 or "single drop" meant that anyone whose ancestry contained a certain percentage of "blood" of a "lesser race" would legally be defined as belonging to that race, no matter what their actual colour. 

But how could these new "scientific" ideas of the Enlightenment be squared with Christian theology, which insisted on the unity of mankind and our common descent from Adam and Eve, and after the flood, from the three sons of Noah? It should be remembered that at the beginning of the enlightenment, Christians had calculated that the universe was approximately 5500 years old and believed the Bible was an historical account of human development. 

There were two strategies. The first was the story of Ham. Ham, Noah's son had seen his father naked one day when Noah had collapsed in a drunken stupor.  (Genesis 9:25-27) Because of this indiscretion, Noah cursed Ham and all his descendants to be servants forever. Although the Bible doesn't actually say so, the idea that the descendants of Ham were Black, their skin afflicted by the curse, crept into European theology. This story could therefore be used to explain perpetual slavery for Blacks. It did less well at explaining the existence of the so-called other "races" - American Indians, Asians, etc.

The second strategy threatened to be more heretical. It was called pre-Adamism and held that other men had existed before Adam. First proposed by La Peyrere in the early 1600s, the theory went that the story of Adam only referred to the creation of the Jews. There were other parallel creations as well, not mentioned in the Bible.  Where else could Adam's children have found mates? This became known as a theory of polygenesis, separate creations. Although La Peyrere only escaped burning at the stake for his ideas by converting to Catholicism and recanting, pre-Adamite speculation continued to thrive as new historical, geological and archaeological evidence undermined belief in the historical accuracy of the Adam and Eve myth. (Popkin, 1978, p 205-231) 

These theories of parallel creations did an end run around the traditional idea of the unity of mankind. If God had created different kinds of people, certainly he had created them with different capacities and different purposes.

By 1774, Jamaican physician Edward Long, often called the father of biological racism was arguing that "Negroes" were a lower order of humanity, probably "a different species of the same Genus."  Whether one accepted this new "science" or held with more traditional Biblical positions such as the curse of Ham, the consensus for human "racial" inequality was growing. So it was that the American Declaration of Independence could confidently declare that "All men are created equal," and not worry about the implications that might have for slavery or western expansion.  By consensus, when Europeans said "men" they meant white males only.

"Scientific Racism"

The revised Great Chain of Being had served its purpose in explaining growing European control and justifying the atrocities of slavery and genocide in the Americas. But by the beginning of the 1800's the Chain was a shambles. Europeans had expanded their control or influence over large parts of the globe; the British in America and India, the Spanish in South America and the Philippines, the Portuguese in Brazil and the coasts of Angola and Mozambique, the French in the Caribbean, Africa and India, the Dutch in what is now known as Indonesia and the Russians in Siberia and Central Asia. Too much was known about the enormous variety of plant and animal forms to fit into any single neat hierarchy. Too much was becoming known about geology and archaeology for thinking people to maintain a literal reading of the Genesis myth. Western science was reaching a new threshold.

Thanks to the extraordinary power of British Empire, Charles Darwin was able to sail around the world in 1837, observing and recording an enormous and perplexing range of flora and fauna. It took him 21 years to gather enough courage to publish his Origin of Species. The book caused outrage in religious circles and revolutionized natural science. Darwin proposed that the huge variety of animal species around the world could be accounted for by "natural selection." There was variation in all animals, he argued, and, as the environment changed, those best suited to survive did, and those less suited died out. Over millions of years, species therefore changed and developed. That meant all species, including "man." 

Darwin was not the only one or even the first to propose a theory of evolution.   Lamarck in France and Haeckel in Germany had their own versions. These new evolutionary theories of one kind or other seemed to explain the human variations that were so troubling to 19th century Europe. To Europeans, the answers were reassuring. Some groups of people were just obviously less evolved, closer to the animals. Whites were obviously the most evolved. Didn't Europe lead the world in scientific, industrial and military development? Weren't Europeans obviously then the fittest, destined by nature to rule and displace the lesser races?  W.F. Edwards, Thomas Arnold, Comte Arthur de Gobineau, Robert Knox to name a few, had all published enormously influential books "proving" the superiority of the "white race” in the first half of the 19th century. And although most of their works predated Darwin's Origin, all alluded to some sort of evolutionary theory. (Curtin, 1971, p xvi-xvii)  This was the new "scientific" racism. The theory proposed that human  "races" were involved in a struggle of the survival of the fittest. Some were destined to dominate. Others would die out and be replaced. Such a theory could justify genocide, the destruction of whole peoples, such as had happened in America and Australia. It could justify slavery by claiming that some groups were little more evolved than beasts of burden. It could justify invasion and colonialism by portraying other peoples as not highly enough developed to manage their own affairs (such people as were to be found in Africa, the Middle East, India, China and Indochina). 

And Europe was poised for just such an imperialist adventure. The industrial revolution had transformed Europe and America.

The new industrial economies needed sources of raw materials and markets to sell their goods. England, France, Germany, the United States and others all scrambled for colonies and spheres of influence around the world in the late 19th century, driven by their expanding industrial economies.  

England seized India and won a war with China for the right to sell Indian opium to the Chinese. The British, French, Belgians, Germans and Portuguese divided Africa up between themselves. The Russians moved more deeply into central Asia.  Although Holland still controlled most of the East Indies, Britain took Australia and France took Indochina. The United States replaced the Spanish in the Philippines and the Caribbean. By 1900 only a handful of non-European nations retained their independence.

"Imperialists, calling upon Darwinism in defence of the subjugation of weaker races, could point to The Origin of Species, which had referred in its subtitle to The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.  Darwin had been talking about pigeons, but the imperialists saw no reason why his theories should not apply to men..." (Hofstadter, 1944, p 171)

The problem with the theory of the biological superiority of white people was that it didn't hold water. Europe had not always been in the forefront of civilization, or the most developed part of the world. So history had to be rewritten. The classical philosophy and science of the ancient world with its predominantly Asian and African roots was attributed completely to the Greeks. (Ghevarughese-Joseph, 1987, p 14-27) When faced with the evidence of the pyramids in Africa, the Egyptians were declared white, as were the great Middle-eastern and Indian civilizations, if their populations now appeared darker it was from mixing with their inferiors. In fact this mixing must be the cause for their decline. African accomplishments south of the Sahara were simply denied. When faced with clear archaeological evidence, such as the Zimbabwe ruins, it was assumed, and maintained against all the evidence, that lost white tribes must have been responsible. 

The titles of several well respected books of the time give us a flavour of the period: A Biological View of Our Foreign Policy (Michel, 1896), The Struggle for Existence in Human Society (Huxley, 1888), History of Intellectual Development on the Lines of Modern Evolution (Crozier, 1897), The Biology of British Politics (Harvey, 1904). (Said, 1979, p 233)

Eugenics

One of the major popularizers of scientific racism was the Eugenics movement.  Founded by Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, Eugenics, the science of better breeding, sought to weed out "inferior strains" and "sickly breeds." Inferior strains and sickly breeds included both the white poor and the "lesser" races.  Eugenics reached fad proportions in Europe and North America in the early twentieth century.  In the US, the American Breeders Association published an influential journal that went to thousands of homes, especially in rural areas.

The magazine contained a mixture of short, readable articles and reviews on a variety of topics, from plant and animal breeding to calls for sterilization of delinquents and racist immigration laws.  In 1924, largely because of the Association's lobbying, American immigration law was changed to restrict the entry of all but northern European or "Nordic" immigrants. Even southern Europeans were not considered racially pure enough for the "white man's country." (Ludmerer, 1972)  (Morgan, 1987)

"Racial theory, stimulated by a rising nationalism and a spreading imperialism, supported by an incomplete and mal-assimilated science, was almost undisputed."  (Trilling, 1955, p 214

Race, Sexuality, Gender and Culture

The concept of race and racism also had other effects on European and American society.  It transformed the official perception of women and produced an enormous preoccupation with sex. 

In a world where the Race was of primary concern, childbearing was key to racial survival. White women were seen as delicate and fragile vessels for the production of babies, the reproduction of the race. As W. Tyler Smith, author of one of the most influential nineteenth century textbooks on midwifery put it, "the uterus is to the Race what the heart is to the Individual: it is the organ of circulation to the species."  (Gallagher & Lafleur, 1987, p 145) 

Women's purpose and fulfillment therefore, could only be the production and raising of strong (male) children to inherit the empire. In order to produce healthy babies, women's purity had to be maintained at all costs. And if their purity was affronted by the biological necessity of sex, they were advised "to close their eyes and think of England." 

When it was noticed that better educated women tended to have fewer children, a racial panic ensued. The "fittest" were not reproducing. The race was in danger of being overrun by the feebleminded and the promiscuous. Perhaps Francis Galton put Eugenics' solution to this "problem" most succinctly. "If child-bearing women must be intellectually handicapped, then the penalty to be paid for race predominance is the subjection of women." (Bacchi, 1978, p 464) 

This preoccupation with reproduction also resulted in an obsession with sex. Only properly regulated "heterosexual" behaviour could guarantee racial survival.   Traditionally, improper sexual activity had been considered a matter of morality and sin. The main victims of fornication or sodomy, for example, were the souls of the fornicators or sodomites themselves. When the community stepped in to punish such behaviour, it was to maintain its moral standards or perhaps to protect itself from the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.

But now, in a world where race was the primary concern, homosexuality or any non-reproductive sexual activity was akin to treason, since it wasted and exhausted the "germ plasm" that carried the strength and abilities of the race. Racial purity went hand in hand with sexual hygiene. The laws and medicine of this period show an obsessive concern with cataloguing and regulating sexual behaviour. (Foucault, 1990, p 115-131) 

Racism and sexism combined to produce bizarre science. For instance, Black people's brains were judged to be smaller than white people's brains, (through largely fudged and fraudulent data). Smaller brains were supposedly less intelligent. (Gould, 1981, p 54). White women's brains were also found to be smaller than those of white men. Therefore the "lesser" races were seen as being more feminine, and women less intelligent, than white men.  (Harding, 1993 p 364) (Nederveen Pieterse, 1992, p 220) As French craniologist F. Pruner wrote in 1866, "The Negro resembles the female in his love for children, his family and his cabin...The black man is to the white man what woman is to man in general, a loving being and a being of pleasure." (Tobach and Rosoff, 1994, p 70).  Race mixture therefore was seen as leading to more "effeminate" behaviour among mixed-race male children. 

Race theory was so widely accepted that even those supporting women's rights made use of its assumptions.  Referring to the Canadian Suffragist movement Carol Bacchi explains;

"Within this framework the women demanded the esteem they deserved as the 'mothers of the race'. To justify their enfranchisement they put forward the simple plea that they needed a vote to protect their homes and children properly."(Bacchi, 1978, p 467

It is important to recognize how profoundly the ideas of race and racism affected European and American culture and society.

"Beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, the thematics of blood was sometimes called on to lend its entire historical weight toward revitalizing the type of political power that was exercised through the devices of sexuality. Racism took shape at this point (racism in its modern, "biologizing," statist form): it was then that a whole politics of settlement, family, marriage, education, social hierarchization, and property, accompanied by a long series of permanent interventions at the level of the body, conduct, health and everyday life, received their colour and their justification from the mythical concern with protecting the purity of the blood and ensuring the triumph of the race." (Foucault, 1990) 

In Canada for example, for almost a century, the assumption of racial difference and inequality was at the basis of most social legislation. The Indian Act segregated and patronized Native Peoples. Immigration Policies restricted Black, Chinese and Jewish immigrants. Canadians of Japanese descent were rounded up and interned during World War Two.  Labour Legislation dictated who could and couldn't work for whom, and who could do what kind of work. Education was often segregated or restricted. Non-whites could not belong to certain professions.

The assumptions of race theory permeated science, art and literature.  It shaped Canadian demography, history and national self-image.

Racism and Fascism

Racism was not restricted to the colonies or to Europe's new relationship with America, Africa and Asia.

"A succession of writers--like Count de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, C.H. Pearson, Madison Grant and Adolf Hitler--began to emphasize the barely perceptible racial differences within the European community itself."  (Curtin, 1971, p 3)

As George Mosse points out in Towards the Final Solution, the Nazi holocaust was not an "aberration of European thought or...scattered moments of madness."  It was the extreme, but logical outcome of a long history of the development of European ideas on race. Mosse cites the invention of "the Jewish nose" in 1711 as one of the signposts of the racialization of the Jews in Europe. Racism transformed the Jewish people from a religious to a racial minority, attributing them with distinct physical characteristics. 

When the Jews had been expelled from Spain in the 15th century it was a cruel act against a religious minority who refused to convert to the Christian faith. But there was no question of conversion in Nazi Germany. Eugenics had become state policy.  The Jews were now considered a biological threat to the Aryan race. And the rules of racial ancestry developed in the American colonies three hundred years before meant that anyone with a drop of "Jewish blood," embodied that threat. No matter what their religious persuasion, they faced extermination -- the final solution

The Winds of Change

While the biological determinism of "race science" dominated Western thought from the middle of the nineteenth century to the second world war, it began to face increasingly serious challenges as the century progressed.  "Race science" made three fundamental assertions: 

The first was that there are distinct "racial" groups identifiable by physical appearance. 
The second was that particular psychological traits such as character, intelligence and morality were biologically determined and that "racial" groups differed in these respects as well as in their physical appearance. 
Finally, it was maintained that these biologically determined traits were responsible for cultural and linguistic differences between "racial" groups. 

Ironically it was the scientific pretensions of these assertions that eventually led to their downfall. As scientific testing in both the physical and social sciences became increasingly sophisticated, the assertions of race science were undermined and disproved. 

The first problem was the identification of racial groups. As the 20th century progressed, biologists became more and more skeptical of their ability to deliver a methodology of racial classification. (Barkan, 1992, p 137) The more data on head shape, bone structure and other measurements of physical anthropology that were gathered, the more impossible it became to actually classify "racial" groups. It became clear that there were a range of inherited physical characteristics across the human population and that attempts to divide this population into distinct races was completely arbitrary. Later, as genetic science developed, it was demonstrated that the way people looked was attributable to the interaction of combinations of genes, and that human beings shared a common genetic heritage with only minor variations. While notions of "race" based on the way people looked (phenotype) might have a social significance in the way people were treated, understanding of our complex, and common genetic heritage (genotype) meant that "race" was no longer an acceptable scientific category. 

The second assertion that psychological and character traits were the result of biology also collapsed. In 1934, American anthropologist Ruth Benedict published her groundbreaking Patterns of Culture.  Benedict pointed out that "the most radical changes in psychological behaviour have taken place in groups whose biological constitution has not appreciably altered." (Barkan, 1992 p 131) 

Benedict, Margaret Mead and other anthropologists of the Boas school also laid to rest the racist notions of culture as biologically produced by demonstrating the determining role of history and environment on culture. 

Notwithstanding mounting evidence that the assertions of "race science" were untenable, the reluctance of scientists to involve themselves in "politics" meant that it proved impossible to marshal an official opposition to the racist orthodoxy which dominated western science and which was rapidly becoming state policy in Nazi Germany.

The End of Colonialism--The End of Racism?

It was the defeat of the Nazis that spelled the end of European colonial power. The allies needed help from their colonies to defeat Germany, and that tended to strengthen the hand of their colonial subjects who were demanding independence. If Britain, France and America had to publicly proclaim that racism was a crime, and that all people were really equal, then how could colonialism be defended? As well, the evidence of the horrors, which were the logical outcome of racist ideas were evidenced once again in the holocaust. And this time that evidence was at home in Europe and not in some far distant colony that was easily ignored. 

In some places the Europeans left their colonies peacefully, safeguarding their interests with negotiated independence. In other places they had to be thrown out through insurrection and anti-colonial wars. But all over the world, the so-called  "lesser races" regained their humanity and independence, and with the destruction of colonialism, international law condemned racism as a crime against humanity.   

With the war over, UNESCO gathered together prominent scientists from around the world to draft an official position on race. The 1950 declaration presented four premises: the mental capacities of all races are similar, there is no evidence for biological deterioration as a result of hybridization ("race mixing"), there is no correlation between national or religious groups and any race (race does not produce culture), and finally "race is less a biological fact than a social myth." (Barkan, 1992, p 341)  

Today, even the last bastion of European race theory and practice, the white settler state of South Africa, is finally engaged in an historic transformation. 

So why is the fight against racism in Canada still so difficult and complicated? If the conditions and interests that led to the development of racist ideas are quickly passing away won't these ideas soon just fade like some long forgotten superstition?  

For one thing 500 years of European control of the world has left some parts of our planet highly developed, and other parts desperately poor and weak. First Nations peoples are still dispossessed. Other people of colour live the cumulative effects of hundreds of years of discrimination, exploitation and marginalization. Such dramatic inequalities are easily explained by attributing them to different "racial" characteristics. Anger and mistrust have been learned and passed on. Assumptions about who belongs, and what different people are like, formed during a period when racial inequality was taken for granted have become deeply ingrained. A large part of Western culture, literature and art also reflects these assumptions. As a result of this history certain groups of white Canadians still enjoy power and privileges denied to others. No matter how we personally feel about it, our "race" still affects our lives and our relationships with others. We live with the results of our history. 

Racism is also, tragically, useful. A racial name can still put someone "in their place" in a moment of conflict. Discrimination and privilege can still be justified. Pools of cheap labour provided by marginalized groups guarantee the profitability of entire industries.   

Different groups of people can still be divided, manipulated and set against each other by recourse to racial stereotypes and identifications. Once fashioned, racism has become a weapon that all sorts of people can pick up and use for their own purposes. It is a weapon that will not easily be thrown away. 

Our responsibility then is not to be paralysed, either by anger or by guilt, over the injustices of history. We must remember those injustices. We must understand them. And most important of all, we must use those memories and understandings as a tool to dismantle their tragic legacy today.  

Tim McCaskell, Toronto, 1994

 BIBLIOGRAPHY

ALLEN, THEODORE, W.  The Invention of the White Race, Racial Oppression and Social Control, Volume One. London. Verso 1994

BACCHI, CAROL. "Race Regeneration and Social Purity. A Study of the Social Attitudes of Canada's English Speaking Suffragists." Social History II.  1978 p 460-474 

BARKAN, ELAZAR. The Retreat of Scientific Racism, Changing concepts of race in Britain and the United States between the world wars.  Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992 

BLAUT, J.M. The Colonizer's Model of the World, Geographic Diffusionism and Eurocentric History. New York, The Guildford Press, 1993 

BURLAND, C.A. The Travels of Marco Polo. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1970 

CAREW, JAN. "The End of Moorish Enlightenment and the Beginning of the Columbian Era." Race and Class. 33, 3, 1992. p 3-15 

CURTIN, PHILLIP D.  Imperialism. London, MacMillan Press, 1971 

DAVIDSON, BASIL. "Columbus: the Bones and Blood of Racism."  Race and Class. 33, 3, 1992, p 17-25 

DAVIES, ALAN. Infected Christianity, A Study of Modern Racism. Kingston and Montreal, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988. 

FOUCAULT, MICHEL.  The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, An Introduction.  New York, Vintage Books, Random House, 1990 

FREDRICKSON, GEORGE M.  White Supremacy, A Comparative Study in American and South African History. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1981 

GALLAGHER, CATHERINE & LAQUEUR, THOMAS.  The Making of the Modern Body, Sexuality and Society in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1987.

GOULD, STEPHEN JAY.  The Mismeasure of Man. New York, W.W. Norton & Co, 1981 

GOULD, STEPHEN JAY.  The Flamingo's Smile, Reflections in Natural History.  New York, W.W. Norton & Co, 1985 

GHEVARUGHESE, JOSEPH, GEORGE. "Foundations of Eurocentrism in Mathematics." Race and Class. XXVIII, 3, 1987, p 13-28 

HARDING, SANDRA. (editor) The "Racial Economy of Science, Toward a Democratic Future. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1993 

HOFSTADTER, RICHARD. Social Darwinism in American Thought.  Boston, Beacon Press, 1955 

LEWIS, BERNARD. Race and Slavery in the Middle East. New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990 

LUDMERER, KENNETH M. "Genetics, Eugenics and the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924." Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 46, 1972, p 59-81 

MONTAGU, ASHLEY. "Race: The History of an Idea." In Race Awareness, The Nightmare and the Vision. (Miller & Dolan, eds) New York, 1971 

MORGAN, SCOTT. "Regressivism in the Progressive Era: Immigrants, Eugenists and Ethnic Displacement." In People in Upheaval. Morgan & Carlson, eds) New York, Centre for Migration Studies, 1987 

MOSSE, GEORGE L.  Towards the Final Solution, A History of European Racism.  New York, Harper Colophon Books, Harper & Row, 1978 

NEDERVEEN PIETERSE, JAN. White on Black, Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture. New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 1992 

POPKIN, RICHARD H. "Pre Adamism in 19th Century American Thought,  'Speculative Biology' and Racism." Philosophia. (Israel) 3, 1978-1979, p 205-239 

SAID, EDWARD W.  Orientalism. New York, Vintage Books, 1974

SEGAL, RONALD. The Race War. Penguin Books, 1967 

SNOWDEN, FRANK M. Before Colour Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks Cambridge Mass, Harvard University Press, 1983 

TOBACH, ETHEL & ROSOFF, BETTY.  Challenging Racism and Sexism, Alternatives to Genetic Explanations. New York, The Feminist Press, 1994 

TRILLING, LIONEL.  Matthew Arnold. New York, Meridian Books, 1955 

VAUGHAN, ADEN T. "From White Man to Redskin: Changing Anglo American Perceptions of the American Indian."  American Historical Review. No 87, 1982, p 917-951 

WILLIAMS, ERIC. From Columbus to Castro, The History of the Caribbean, 1492-1969.  New York, Vintage Books, 1984 

WRIGHT, RONALD.  Stolen Continents, The "New World" Through Indian Eyes.  Toronto, Penguin Books, 1993 

YEBOAH, SAMUEL KENNEDY. The Ideology of Racism. London, Hansib Publishing Ltd., 1988 

ZINN, HOWARD.  A Peoples History of the United States. New York, Harper and Row, 1980

 

 

 

 

 

History of Development of Racist Ideas
(QUESTIONS)

 

• How did people originally explain differences in skin colour in the ancient world?

• What differences among people were considered most significant in the ancient world

 

• How was slavery organized in the ancient world?

• Why did Europeans begin to explore the Atlantic Ocean?  What were they looking for\

 

• Who were the Europeans allowed to take as slaves

• What was the great debate in America around using Native people as slaves?   Who won

 

• What was the new economic role of slavery in America

• When did ideas about the religious basis for slavery begin to give way to racial ideas and why

 

• When did Native people begin to be considered a special race

• Who began to popularize the ideas of race in Europe?  How did these ideas fit into the belief in the "Chain of Being

 

• Why did people abandon the "Chain of Being" idea?

• How was the theory of evolution used to explain "racial" differences?

 

• How did these new ideas of race effect different groups in Europe such as women, homosexuals and Jews?

• How have these ideas affected life in Canada?

 

• How were these ideas made popular in Canada?

• How did the Nazis use common ideas about race in their platform & how did that contribute to the holocaust?

 

• What did the defeat of the Nazis mean for the idea of "White Supremacy"?

• How are these old racist ideas communicated to our society today?

 

• What uses do people put these ideas to?

•  What needs to be done to fight racism today?