Hatred and bigotry are hardly new sins, and certainly not unique to America.
Racism, however, is very much a new sin, relatively speaking. The word "race" did not begin to be broadly applied to human beings until the 18th century. Perhaps the earliest example of the word "race" being used to subdivide humanity is an essay published by Fra…
Hatred and bigotry are hardly new sins, and certainly not unique to America.
Racism, however, is very much a new sin, relatively speaking. The word "race" did not begin to be broadly applied to human beings until the 18th century. Perhaps the earliest example of the word "race" being used to subdivide humanity is an essay published by François Bernier in 1684. One of the earliest notable exemplars of "race" being used this way in the English language comes from Thomas Jefferson's "Notes On The State Of Virginia".
The timing is, I suspect, significant. In 1776, Jefferson and the American intellectual elite threw their energies behind the Declaration of Independence and the proposition that "all men are created equal". This is a problem when you own slaves. Slavery was never an issue throughout most of human history simply because human thought did not focus much on the issue of equality until the 18th century and the Age of Enlightenment. The early Christians were committed egalitarians, but beyond that Western thought just didn't concern itself with equality until the Enlightenment.
The Age of Enlightment was also the time frame when Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus set forth his pivotal taxonomy, which is a foundational aspect of modern biology, first presenting the structure in Systema Naturae in 1735.
The early biologists were rather infamous for grouping creatures together on the basis of their most obvious characteristics, and for distinguishing between species on the basis of their most obvious characteristics. This was something Darwin to pains to discredit and challenge in Origin of Species in the 19th century.
It takes no great insight to see how the language of "race" and "racism" comes to be: with an intellectual movement promoting human equality colliding with plantation systems throughout the British Empire with significant economic investment in slaves, a simple embrace of human equality was, for many of the intellectual elite, an economic impossibility. Even though Thomas Jefferson wrote "all men are created equal", and channeled Locke from his 1690 Second Treatise on Government in doing so, had he followed through with that principle in his own life he would have been impoverished overnight, and not just at the end of his life when he was overburdened by debt.
The human tendency to want to classify everything, coupled with Linnaean taxonomy coming increasingly into vogue, offered the economic elites a neat way to square that circle. By reimagining African slaves as being of a different race, they were no longer part of the "all men are created equal". With that one rhetorical sleight of hand, the problem of owning slaves while preaching equality was solved. What started out as the clumsy and crude efforts by early proto-biologists to "organize" the natural world quickly gained currency because of its value as a moral escape route out of a very uncomfortable hypocrisy.
It is important to note this evolution of thought regarding race, because the uncomfortable truth is that even the Abolitionists were far from racial egalitarians (nor was Abraham Lincoln, who very explicitly stated publicly that black people could never be equal to white people).
It is this history of the concept of racism and its relatively recent antecedents within human thought that makes Dr. Martin Luther King's stance on segregation and racism so important. Both in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail and his famous "I have a dream" speech, he very specifically attacked the base concept of classifying people this way. Segregation is sinful, as Dr. King powerfully articulates, drawing on the work of Jewish theologian Martin Buber, it replaces the natural and proper "I-thou" relationship with an "I-it" relationship, effectively reducing humans to the status of objects.
Dr. King was focused on segregation specifically, but it takes no great insight to understand that the sin lies not just in the segregation, but in the labeling and categorizing itself. It is this "othering" that is sinful, and it does not require black codes or Jim Crow laws to be a pernicious and evil influence in the world. As we saw with the rise of the perjorative "anti-vaxxer", there is no limit to human capacity for othering, labeling, categorizing, and, finally, hating.
I won't make out Donald Trump to be some paragon of ethnic virtue and comity. I don't have to. He's not the one who's putting this toxic language of race into the fore. Conservatives are not the ones putting this toxic language of race into the fore--although many conservatives are complicit in perpetuating it.
Kamala Harris could have been the person best suited to speak truth to the ugly power people invest in the language of race. She could have been someone who could have said "it's all bullshit." Indian mother, Jamaican father, and educated in majority white schools as a child, she was better positioned than even Barack Obama was to smash the false idol of race and put an end to that toxic rhetoric once and for all. Instead, she's doubling down on it and using it as a political lever to further her political ambitions.
Hatred and bigotry are hardly new sins, and certainly not unique to America.
Racism, however, is very much a new sin, relatively speaking. The word "race" did not begin to be broadly applied to human beings until the 18th century. Perhaps the earliest example of the word "race" being used to subdivide humanity is an essay published by François Bernier in 1684. One of the earliest notable exemplars of "race" being used this way in the English language comes from Thomas Jefferson's "Notes On The State Of Virginia".
The timing is, I suspect, significant. In 1776, Jefferson and the American intellectual elite threw their energies behind the Declaration of Independence and the proposition that "all men are created equal". This is a problem when you own slaves. Slavery was never an issue throughout most of human history simply because human thought did not focus much on the issue of equality until the 18th century and the Age of Enlightenment. The early Christians were committed egalitarians, but beyond that Western thought just didn't concern itself with equality until the Enlightenment.
The Age of Enlightment was also the time frame when Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus set forth his pivotal taxonomy, which is a foundational aspect of modern biology, first presenting the structure in Systema Naturae in 1735.
The early biologists were rather infamous for grouping creatures together on the basis of their most obvious characteristics, and for distinguishing between species on the basis of their most obvious characteristics. This was something Darwin to pains to discredit and challenge in Origin of Species in the 19th century.
It takes no great insight to see how the language of "race" and "racism" comes to be: with an intellectual movement promoting human equality colliding with plantation systems throughout the British Empire with significant economic investment in slaves, a simple embrace of human equality was, for many of the intellectual elite, an economic impossibility. Even though Thomas Jefferson wrote "all men are created equal", and channeled Locke from his 1690 Second Treatise on Government in doing so, had he followed through with that principle in his own life he would have been impoverished overnight, and not just at the end of his life when he was overburdened by debt.
The human tendency to want to classify everything, coupled with Linnaean taxonomy coming increasingly into vogue, offered the economic elites a neat way to square that circle. By reimagining African slaves as being of a different race, they were no longer part of the "all men are created equal". With that one rhetorical sleight of hand, the problem of owning slaves while preaching equality was solved. What started out as the clumsy and crude efforts by early proto-biologists to "organize" the natural world quickly gained currency because of its value as a moral escape route out of a very uncomfortable hypocrisy.
It is important to note this evolution of thought regarding race, because the uncomfortable truth is that even the Abolitionists were far from racial egalitarians (nor was Abraham Lincoln, who very explicitly stated publicly that black people could never be equal to white people).
It is this history of the concept of racism and its relatively recent antecedents within human thought that makes Dr. Martin Luther King's stance on segregation and racism so important. Both in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail and his famous "I have a dream" speech, he very specifically attacked the base concept of classifying people this way. Segregation is sinful, as Dr. King powerfully articulates, drawing on the work of Jewish theologian Martin Buber, it replaces the natural and proper "I-thou" relationship with an "I-it" relationship, effectively reducing humans to the status of objects.
Dr. King was focused on segregation specifically, but it takes no great insight to understand that the sin lies not just in the segregation, but in the labeling and categorizing itself. It is this "othering" that is sinful, and it does not require black codes or Jim Crow laws to be a pernicious and evil influence in the world. As we saw with the rise of the perjorative "anti-vaxxer", there is no limit to human capacity for othering, labeling, categorizing, and, finally, hating.
https://blog.petersproverbs.us/p/you-shall-not-hate
I won't make out Donald Trump to be some paragon of ethnic virtue and comity. I don't have to. He's not the one who's putting this toxic language of race into the fore. Conservatives are not the ones putting this toxic language of race into the fore--although many conservatives are complicit in perpetuating it.
Kamala Harris could have been the person best suited to speak truth to the ugly power people invest in the language of race. She could have been someone who could have said "it's all bullshit." Indian mother, Jamaican father, and educated in majority white schools as a child, she was better positioned than even Barack Obama was to smash the false idol of race and put an end to that toxic rhetoric once and for all. Instead, she's doubling down on it and using it as a political lever to further her political ambitions.
Suffice it to say, I am not impressed.
Well, I’m endlessly impressed with YOU, Peter! I always learn from your writings, and your wisdom. Thank you!
I ADORE how knowledgeable you are!
I read a lot and have a fantastic memory--not quite eidetic but damn close.