3/19/2023
Citations:
Ward, Julie K., and Tommy L. Lott, editors. Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays. Blackwell, 2002. Buy Here!
Lewis, Bernard. Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry. Oxford University Press, 1992. Buy here!
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TRANSCRIPT
My name’s Zach, and you made a wrong turn awhile back cause you ended up in one of my strange corners of thought. Today, we’re going to talk about race. Not all the theories behind race, just the history of the word race. Historically, it has been an extremely important & commonly used word, at least in the last like 500 years. By 1850, Scottish Anatomist Robert Knox declared, “Race or hereditary descent is everything; it stamps the man.” But, like all words, the history of the word race is complicated. You see, the contemporary definition of the word race just didn’t pop up out of nowhere. It’s changed quite a bit.
When we talk about racism, prejudice against people of different races, we can’t help but notice a striking similarity between prejudices against different ethnicities and different nationalities. While distinct words, that describe distinct concepts, these three words—race, ethnicity, nationality—seem to derive from each other or even share a common source. And these three concepts seem to leak into each other blurring the distinctions between them.
We see this if we look the current dictionary definition of Race. Wait, who still owns a dictionary? Ok, so if we look on dictionary.com we find.
- a group of persons related by common descent or heredity.
- a population so related.
- (archaic) any of the traditional divisions of humankind, the commonest being the Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negro, characterized by supposedly distinctive and universal physical characteristics. Biological conception of race that was all the rage in the 19th and early 20th centuries contributing to “sciences” like eugenics.
- an arbitrary classification of modern humans, sometimes, especially formerly, based on any or a combination of various physical characteristics, as skin color, facial form, or eye shape, and now frequently based on such genetic markers as blood groups.
- a socially constructed category of identification based on physical characteristics, ancestry, historical affiliation, or shared culture:Her parents wanted her to marry within her race.
- a human population partially isolated reproductively from other populations, whose members share a greater degree of physical and genetic similarity with one another than with other humans.
- a group of tribes or peoples forming an ethnic lineage:the Slavic race.
- any people united by common history, language, cultural traits, etc.:the Dutch race.
One thing we find with the word race today is a distinction between groups of people regarding skin color, physiognomic traits, hair texture, genetics, and other physiological characteristics. At the same time, We find other leaky concepts that muddy the waters here: heritage, descent, ancestry, culture, tribe.
So, how are all these terms related?
In ancient Greece, Plato used the word genos to describe different kinds, including different kinds of people. Aristotle used the word ethnos (which is where we get the word ethnicity & ethnography) to describe people with inferior styles of government compared to the Greek polis, or city-state. In both cases, the distinction had less to do with physiological characteristics or common ancestry, but were based on things like virtues. However, Aristotle thought these virtues were influenced by a climate model, whereby peoples living in more extreme climates lacked certain virtues in contrast to the climate of the Greeks which was just right. In general, Ancient Greece viewed all non-Greeks as inferior referring to them as barbarians (barbaros), people who babbled and didn’t speak Greek.
In Latin, race is translated to “gens” which refers to a common ancestry or stock. Gens is etymologically linked to genero which means to beget or produce. However, as usual, Romans copied the Greeks homework and primarily discriminated against anyone who was not-Roman.
During the Medieval period, the Islamic world come closest to a conception of race & racism. They often described different peoples like the black Africans, the Persians, the Turkish, and the Slavs going into detail about both physiological and cultural temperament or constitution. The Arabs saw themselves as the superior people in relations to secondary peoples described above. Of course, the Arabs saw themselves as white referring to Northerners as having red skin. While at first, this Arab vs. non-Arab dichotomy was the driving force behind ethnic discrimination, this became complicated after most of the inhabitants of the conquered territories had not only converted to Islam, but also interbred with the Arabs. An anti-black racism certainly developed during this extensive period where Africans were in practice & on average at the bottom of the social hierarchy. However, this was heavily based on Aristotle’s climate theory of peoples, and Islamic jurisprudence technically considered all peoples equal in the eyes of God.
Throughout the Medieval period in Europe, there were as many different types of peoples as there were kingdoms & cities. European Christendom was no where near as politically united as the multi-continental Islamic Caliphates, and most European nations didn’t interact much with non-European peoples mostly because most European peoples were too busy hating each other. However, this was not the case in Iberia as Muslims controlled parts of the Iberian peninsula for centuries. Anywho, this narrow definition of what counted as a separate peoples continued into the Renaissance, though this definition was already becoming broader, generalizing more & more different ethnic and political peoples into a homogeneous group, by the 15th century in Portugal which had developed extensive trade with West African peoples, including in slaves.
16th century explorer Johann Boemus in his Fardle of Facions (1555) divided the people Affrike into Egyptians, Ethiopians, Cynnamies, “Ryzophagi” (root eaters), “Spermophagi” (seed eaters), “Illophagi” (fruit eaters), and “Ichthiophagi” (fish eaters). Africans were recognized for their diverse governments with complex hierarchies of nobles, priests, and royal officials. While Africans were considered inferior to Europeans, this had little to do with racial hierarchy and more to do with forms of governance & civilization. None of these divisions had the physiological descriptions that the word race would later gain. In fact, there was debate during this period whether all Africans were even black.
In 1590, Jose de Acosta distinguished Native Americans primarily by forms of government: Monarchies, Communalities governed by many, and barbarous hunter-gatherers.
This recognition of diversity continued well into the 17th century. John Ogilby’s work Africa, written in 1670, described some nations like the Kabangos of west central Africa and the Hottentots of southern Africa were “scarce a degree above Beasts. On the other hand, the Kingdom of Guinea almost rivaled the splendor of Europe, and the Abyssinians were viewed as “quick spirited, and lovers of Learning and Learned Men.”
“European explorers certainly imagined themselves as superior to all the peoples they encountered. But this sense of superiority was founded not on a race hierarchy, but on the belief that Europeans had achieved a level of civilization unknown in other nations. African and American peoples were scorned as ‘beastly’ (or often as ‘rustic’) to the extent that they appeared to fall short of European ideas of urbanity and sophistication. Comparisons with animals were not meant to indicate that the human race was ranked in a fixed scale determined by God or nature. The preoccupying subject of ethnographic literature was, rather, the relative sophistication of the political and social systems established in other countries. And this awareness of ‘national’ differences outweighed anything approaching a modern tendency to identify a particular skin-color or physiognomy with a ‘race.’”
Nicholas Hudson
Yet, this recognition of diversity amongst Africans & Americans disappeared during the 18th Century. Racial appearance and constitution began to dominate ethnographic literature. The 18th century in general seemed exhausted by the details & diversity provided in previous centuries. William Robertson wrote in The History of America in 1770, “In a general history of America, it would be highly improper to describe the condition of each petty community, or to investigate every minute circumstance which contributes to form the character of its members. Such an inquiry would lead to details of immeasurable and tiresome extent. The qualities belonging to the people of all the different tribes have such a near resemblance, that they may be painted with the same features.” This sentiment was echoed by Frenchman Abbe Reynal (1713-1796) who basically said tribal differences were insignificant compared to the general sameness based on skin color, physiognomy, and intellectual capacity.
What explains this trend in European ethnography from national differences to racial similarities? Some have argued that the hierarchy of races was created as a deliberate justification for slavery & imperialism. But, there were many abolitionists like Abbe Raynal and English scientist Charles White who still believed enslaved peoples were inherently inferior racially to Europeans.
“Nevertheless, even without a conscious design to contrive a convenient ideology of ‘race,’ the general influence of imperialism and slavery deprived non-European peoples of their national identities and made those differences less important to Europeans.”
Nicholas Hudson
Basically, the desire to expand the slave trade and expand empire building necessitated an ideology which justified it, and in turn a racial ideology gave intellectual authority to slavery & colonial expansion. Native Americans presented a hindrance to European colonists not because they were inherently racially inferior, but because they stood in the way of Westward Expansion.
Until the Enlightement of the 18th century, humans were often excluded from naturalist classifications of plants & animals. Since humans were believed to be made in God’s image, categorizing humans scientifically like beasts & plants was considered profane. Going back to Aristotle, reason was an essential difference between humans and other animals, which is why human’s were called rational animals. The rationality to recognize God was crucial distinction between humans and animals throughout the middle ages. English philosopher John Locke argued that “reason” was no more an essential attribute of humans than any other attribute. German philosophy Gottfried Leibniz disagreed with Locke saying all humans-“Negroes, Chinese, and American Indians”-were divided from the rest of nature by the exclusive possession of “reason.” It was Locke’s viewpoint which gained traction amongst the emerging sciences of biology, taxonomy, & anthropology.
Naturalists like Carl Linnaeus, Georges-Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon, and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach applied the emerging biological taxonomy to humans, though often in different ways.
“Before these authors, ‘racism’ could exist as little more than a visceral distrust of physical difference, crudely expressed in degrading images and outbursts of disgust. Only with the rise of racial science could ‘racism’ take the form of an ‘objective’ and self-conscious conviction in the radical inferiority of certain visibly different groups.”
Nicholas Hudson
Linnaeus believed there were varieties in different kinds of humans based on physiological characteristics, even removing the famous Aristotelian distinction of humans as rational animals compared to all other beasts. Linnaeus saw four varieties of humans: Europaeus, Americanus, Asiaticus, Africanus. Humans were as much a part of the natural order as other fauna and flora.
Buffon criticized Linnaeus’ taxonomy for a number of reasons. He found Linnaeus’ varieties as too static and rigid to be useful at describing the natural world including humans.For instance, Linnaeus believed rhinoceros were a form of elephant, and that snakes were a form of amphibian. That’s just silly. Buffon was the first to use the word “race” systematically and scientifically to divide different humans. Species was a lineage of people who could produce offspring. Race became a sub-group of species. Race was a lineage too, but one which expressed the changing nature of human differences over time. Buffon argued that taxonomy should not focus on single traits, but a whole ensemble of different traits. The racial ensemble for Buffon included skin-color, stature, physiognomy, hair-type, and intelligence.
Below the group of races is where we find different nationalities. Both Buffon and the father of physical anthropology Johann Friedrich Blumenbach held this belief. Both they & Linnaeus still believed there was some validity to Aristotle’s ancient theory of climate difference.
By the early 18th century, this term nation was already taking on a distinct definition from race. As early as 1694, the Dictionnaire de l’ Academie Francaise (1694) defined a nation as: All the inhabitants of the same State, of the same country, who live under the same laws and use the same language, etc. Philosopher David Hume took this definition as a way to refute Aristotle’s theory of climate differences to understand national differences.
“Hume’s conclusion was that ‘national character’ was formed not by climate or any natural difference, but by ‘moral’ causes. By this he meant differences of government, economy, diplomacy, profession, and so forth-all those factors that we now call ‘culture’ or ‘social environment.”
Nicholas Hudson
For Hume and also, philosopher Voltaire, nation was not some biological sub-category of race, but a purely cultural phenomena. However, this reinforced the notion that race was a real, natural biological kind inherent in people. “Race” stood for a biological division created by environment or originally established by God. “Nation” designated a heritage of social customs and beliefs. Both terms, we should add, had become increasingly estranged from their common, original sense of “lineage.” As the term “race” was now generally used, as in the work of Blumenbach, it specifically denoted visible differences of physiology rather than a common stock.
We can look at the history of the word nation as well. Ancient Greeks referred to all non-Greeks as barbarians (barbaros). Aristotle used the term ethnos to refer to peoples with less civilized forms of government. In Rome, the Latin word “natio” was often used to describe the barbarians outside the empire. We only see a more specific and narrow definition of the word with the enlightenment. Contrary to its ancient usage, nations described the civilization of Europeans. As such, it could no longer be applied to civilizations that were considered inferior. By the 19th century, Africans & Americans did not have nations so much as tribes. These tribes were not ruled by kings, but by mere chiefs.
Yet, the division between race & nation would not last. By the mid-19th century, these words found themselves increasingly wedded.
“’Race’ now meant more than just a ‘lineage’ or even a variation of the human species induced by climate or custom. It meant an innate and fixed disparity in the physical and intellectual make-up of different peoples. ‘Nation,’ in turn, was more than a group of people living under the same government. It was the very ‘soul’ of personal identity, the very life-blood churning through an individual speaking a particular dialect in one of Europe’s innumerable regions.”
Nicholas Hudson
We see the re-joining of these two terms most sharply when looking at the beliefs of Nazism. The German people were a superior race, but in order to maintain that superiority, they not only needed racial purity but also the soul of a nation to guide them.
In the mid-20th century, after the horrors of the Holocaust and colonization, race as a biological concept was increasingly debunked.
“According to an increasing number of scholars, the subdivision of humankind into discrete racial types is nothing more than a ‘whited sepulchre,’ and is based on a merely arbitrary selection of inherited traits and the roughest forms of statistically averaging. We could perhaps better speak of the ‘racialising’ of peoples-the subjection of populations to scientifically invalid forms of classification based on an arbitrary selection of phenotypical or genetic differences. In considering the history of such ‘racialising,’ we should, at least, see that it is by no means a permanent or unavoidable way of understanding humankind.”
Nicholas Hudson
And, that’s where the history of this word has brought us. A socio-historic concept, an arbitrary fiction of earlier centuries that has nevertheless created very real systemic differences amongst the different peoples that fall within these categories. If you liked this video, drop a like, if you didn’t like this video don’t forget to subscribe to see more videos. Leave a comment to let us know your thoughts. Feel free to stalk me on Instagram and become a Patron on Patreon. I’ll see you the next time you make a wrong turn, in one of my strange corners of thought. Bye!
