I’ve been thinking a lot about racism recently. I wonder how it actually started and how far back it goes. I’ve thought about different aspects of it including what seems to drive it. I know it’s a learned behavior. Nobody is born a racist just like nobody is born a thief. It’s learned through observing how adults act and what they say. Children mimic what they see and hear so they will fit in with their friends and classmates.
For some people, there’s a deep-seated need to feel like they’re better than others. They need to feel superior to someone else, so they have some sort of esteem. I read an essay about how religion may have driven racism, but I don’t know if that’s the whole story. I know that religion played a big part in slavery throughout the ages. Then again, governments made it okay to enslave people from foreign lands conquered in war.
I read in another essay how it was the Portuguese who first enslaved native peoples in Africa. I’ve not heard of anyone being taken to Europe as a slave, but I wouldn’t doubt they took them to South America. I firmly believe money is at the root of slavery. I think the white Europeans saw these other people living as hunter gatherers and immediately felt superior to them. They had more advanced weapons and had armor, so the natives were no match for them. It’s easy to enslave people who are weak.
Over time, I think the masters dehumanized the slaves. I firmly believe that hatred toward another human being requires you to dehumanize them. The Nazis dehumanized the Jews and gays. The white slave owners in the Southern US dehumanized their slaves. How else could an otherwise sane person justify such cruelty to another human being?
Most of the details are still fuzzy to me right now but I’m going to keep trying to educate myself until things become clearer.
