What is race? Why is there racism? Will race ever cease to exist?
“What causes racism is actually greed… Any argument that claims racism is an innate ‘tribalism’ or fear response in human nature is simply wrong; as easily proven by observing babies. Babies have no concept of race or aversion to other races. They only show innate fear, disgust or aversion to a few things: for example, crawling insects, snakes, some male humans, and any sudden change, like a loud noise or quick movement. Saying racism is natural is like saying we have a natural fear of vampires, zombies, or mummies.
Because like these monsters, racial types are invented and given meaning by cultures; they are not biological categories, but social groups. Until the 17th century race was defined by language – a race was a group who spoke the same tongue. Speaking differently was what people noticed about strangers. Greeks called other people barbarians because all other languages sounded like noise to them: ba ba ba. There is no consistent definition of race across generations – so it is not just improbable, but impossible to have an innate fear of other races. Skin colour just isn’t very scary; very few horror films are set in tanning salons. And if we did fear difference it would be people who speak differently. Well, my British accent doesn’t seem to scare people.
Racism is learned behaviour. This process can, and has been, empirically observed. So why do some – many – cultures teach their children racism? Historically, the most common cause, by far, has been greed.
Let’s take the racism of Europeans towards Africans as a classic example.
This racism simply did not exist at first. Prior to the slave trade, the division of society was not race but class. Upper class people were viewed unquestioningly as superior to lower class. Africans were not described or viewed as inferior to Europeans – class was the deciding factor. So high status Africans (princes etc) were welcomed in European high society, African nobles were portrayed in literature and art as respected men of honour and virtue, and in fact African servants were – probably due to rarity – the highest status of all servants. They would be proudly displayed by the upper classes as a sign of wealth and prestige, like an export car today.
This practice now seems very dehumanising; African servants were like pampered pets, not equals. But compare it with white servants of the time; they were not treated as pets, but simply as working animals to be hidden away. The cruelty of this was not racially determined; if anything black skin was valued more highly, for two people of the same class.
This was the ad hoc servant trade, which preceded the slave trade. Europeans took Africans in battle, or via kidnap – or also via a much smaller direct trade with upper class Africans . (NB – this secondary trade is seized on by some American conservatives as a key fact, although as a non-partisan non-American I can’t pretend to understand this argument or have any interest in it, since it bizarrely assumes that defending a race’s record is more key to understanding the slave trade than either slavery or trade.)
But as theft and trade developed, and Africa was recognised as a rich resource, traders began to recognise the market value of people as a luxury good – much more valuable by weight than other goods. If the traders could stop people automatically seeing a person with black skin as a person – then they could buy and sell them like any other commodity.
So it was nothing to do with fear, or a desire to feel superior, that led to this racism. In fact, snobbery had led to valuing black people more highly – as being more exotic. This is still racism, but of a very different, non-ideological kind and still based on a hunger for status and prestige – i.e. greed.
Racism was not the cause of the slave trade; the slave trade was the cause of racism.
Fear does not cause racism – racism causes fear. It is designed for this purpose.
What led to the ideology of racism, the unspeakably cruel denigration of Africans by Europeans, was greed. Pure greed. And greed is still what causes the racial divide today.
In fact, slavery is still very operant in America. To an economist, the data is not debatable. But now slaves are a domestic production, not an international trade. In fact, slavery has increased dramatically over the last 50 years. But now it is called the penal system.
Africans are farmed domestically in ghettos, then herded like livestock by armed rangers (police) and contracted into slavery (sentenced) for being of low economic status (financial offences e.g. being in debt, or owning ten dollars of crack in an area with no ATMs where crack functions as untaxed currency, and dealers earn less than McDonalds staff).
Then the African livestock are transferred to cages – prisons – where they are put to work for a subsistence wage (cigarette money, bed, food) as nearly free labour for private companies. This vast slave labour force underpins the competitiveness of American companies; domestic production depends on them, like the cotton trade once did. The most productive are transported around the country and sold on an open market to different contractors.
I promise this is a true account – all the data is public domain and freely available. In fact, they created many of the laws that still imprison Africans today in the years immediately after the slave trade act abolished slavery. It was a direct swap of one legal contract with another.
So racism is still caused by greed.
This is not liberal propaganda. It’s not a political argument at all, since I am not partisan or even American. It’s empirically observable economic data, widely available – but not publicised for obvious reasons.
I can happily provide data, sources and references on request.
Historical side-note:
African servants are no longer displayed proudly. Donald Trump barred black staff from serving a high-ranking mafia don who lived in his hotel, at the murderer’s personal request; this is extensively documented, and I can provide links to these public domain records.
We all become history one day.
One day it will be a matter of historical record that this is the man you supported, if today you choose to support Trump. A man who has never once denied or hidden either his greed (cause of racism), or even his prioritisation of race and country-of-origin as the fundamental way to categorise the population.
As regards greed, he has in fact proudly boasted about it, to wild applause from poor white people unhappy with the increase in social value of poor Africans (Black Lives Matter) and other races in recent years.
This small increase in social value is among the ruling class to which Trump belongs.
I’m European. We’ve been where you are going: but with us, it was a while back. Before America and the slave trade. It’s what produced both of them, in fact.
But please don’t trust me. Check for yourself. Ask him. Use your constitutional right to ask him directly. Ask Trump if he believes in greed.
To Trump, greed isn’t just good: it’s GREAT!!!!“
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