This week we discussed the question, which came first, slavery or racism? I believe that this could be seen as the chicken and the egg debate of history, and can be argued forever without coming to a concise conclusion. I do not think that one came about before the other, and that they did not have a mutually exclusion relationship. Instead, they built off each other to and used different types of authority to make a very strong system of slavery based on power structure dictated by race.
This was possible because at the time in Europe the population had one main authority, while another authority was gaining power. The first authority was the church who held all native people to be savages, and therefore in need of salvation and conquering. The second authority was science, which at the time made racism a self fulfilling prophecy. The major scientists were, surprise, all Western Europeans who essentially made up there own theories to prove themselves superior. Originally, even Eastern European was discriminated against but by making a common enemy out of a more physically distinguishable group of people racism became easier. By making African and native peoples the same, Europeans created ‘the other’. ‘The other’ was different, savage, violent, inhuman, and therefore capable and worthy of being enslaved.
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Scientific finding can be extremely skewed or altered toward bias...obviously, in this situation, scientists have an agenda. Science is important, but only if you keep challenging it--our world has been redefined thousands of times by scientific findings. When it comes to racism and some sort of idea of "predisposition," I think Natalie's ideas ring pretty true...
Racism was frequently applied to "the other." Good point Natalie. In English colonization, similar racist attitudes were directed toward the Irish, who were also western Europeans.
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