An Essay on the Origins of Racism

AN ESSAY ON THE ORIGINS OF RACISM
Mathew Forstater
Draft—Comments Welcome

I would like to argue for a synthesis of two (sets of) theories of the origins of racism. On the one hand, there are theories of the origins of race antagonism and exploitation and racism (and in this approach these two phenomena–racism and race antagonism–are carefully distinguished) that look to the origins of colonial capitalism for their basis. On the other hand are theories that investigate the role of European discourse, mythology, and ethos in the formation of racism. While certain formulations of these two approaches may be incompatible with one another, I want to argue that a rigorous and comprehensive development of a theory of the origins of racism demands a carefully constructed synthesis of the two. Let us begin with consideration of another proposition, criticism of which will take us into areas relevant to this essay's focus.
There is a belief that can be found both in numerous works written over a long period of time and in what may be called the practical ideology of modern society, that race antagonism and racism are “natural” or inherent features of humanity from “time immemorial.” As with other aspects of practical ideology considered natural or inherent, there is often no more justification for this view than "just look around and it is clear to see." When part of a theory of racism, however, the evidence put forward in support of this view is the numerous conflicts between peoples throughout recorded human history–the conquerings, invasions, enslavements, slaughterings that fill the history books, as well as religious works, and written and representational arts.
Several concerns immediately come to the fore here. First, “race” here is not distinguished from other categories of group identification, say "tribe," nation, caste, ethnicity, culture, and so on. One possible counter to this would be to discard examples of inter-group conflict that cannot be specifically attributed to "race" as distinguished from these other categories of group identity, and to use only those cases in which this can be demonstrated.
The problem that arises then is how “race” is to be defined. If racism is to be a natural "mutual antipathy" (Cox, 1949), then there is a strong possibility that “race” itself will be considered “natural,” i.e., considered a verifiable biological category. This gives us the opportunity to briefly review the evidence regarding biological foundations of race.
Some have distinguished between three historical views as to the origins of the human species (Diop, 1967). Polyphleticism is the belief that three different human “races” descended from three different primate families (gorilla, chimpanzee, orangutan). Diop points out that this outrageously preposterous theory was intended to justify the hierarchical ranking of “races” based on distinct human origins. Polygeneticists and monogeneticists both agree that Africa was the common birthplace of humanity (the work of Leakey at Olduvai, discovery of “Lucy,” etc.), but in the polygenetic theory Africa was only the birthplace up to Homo erectus. Homo erectus then migrated to other continents, according to this view, and the evolution from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens sapiens on the different continents took different forms. However Diop and others have shown that the most ancient Homo sapiens sapiens is from Africa and the first European Homo sapiens sapiens migrated to Europe from Africa via Spain.
The origin of humankind is most certainly monogenetic. It is now commonly agreed upon that there is little difference between the genetic variation between, say, peoples of Africa, Europe, and Asia, and the genetic variation among Africans themselves, Europeans themselves, and Asians themselves (Appiah, 1985, reviews some of the evidence). It is also widely agreed that aspects of culture such as political and moral belief systems, aesthetic attitudes, etc., are not biologically determined to any significant extent.
The very notion that the objects of inquiry (“races” themselves) can be identified is of course extremely problematic. This is one of Harry Chang's major points in his discussion of “natural race” (Chang, 1985). If race is “natural,” how is it that a Black person in the United States (where the traditional “racial rule” was/is “one drop of Black blood”) would be “white” in some parts of the Caribbean and South America and “Coloured” under the apartheid South Africa racial categories? The problem arises not because there aren't differences in physiognomy (there are), but because of the impossibility of legitimately fashioning discrete categories out of what is “essentially a continuum” (Chang, 1985).
Such evidence disrupts the biological basis of the theory of inherent racism. However, the argument might be made by supporters of this view that inherent race antagonism exists in the case of real or perceived differences. Thus, even if there is no such biological category of race, there is a natural antagonism in the case of perceived racial differences, i.e., distinctive ascriptive traits.
Supporters of the mutual antipathy view would still have to explain any cases in which groups distinguishable by physical characteristics lived peaceably and interacted with one another in a positive manner. A good example here would be that of Europeans and Africans prior to, say, the 15th century. The simple question can be put forward: was there race antagonism between them?
Again, the work of Diop (TheAfrican Origin of Civilization) is central here, although more recently the name of Martin Bernal (Black Athena) is the one popularly associated with the argument (see also Du Bois, The World and Africa). Let us briefly summarize the findings: 1) Ancient Egypt was African (Black); 2) the source of Egyptian civilization itself was Ethiopia and “inner” Africa (a point partially misunderstood because “Upper” Egypt is south of “Lower” Egypt); 3) the moral and intellectual achievements of Ancient Greece were derived from Ancient Egypt. Attempts to de-Africanize Egypt (and Greece), Aryanize African civilizations (the “Hamitic” or “black caucasoid” hypothesis) have failed (at the scholarly level; popular belief is still that Egypt was “white”).
The evidence, which is primarily in the words of the Greeks themselves,
is not of “stealing” from a “racial other” they have mutual antipathy toward, but of praise and admiration of a culture they believed to be “superior.” This includes not just the intellectual and artistic achievements, but the praise of physical characteristics as well.
It was not only Ancient Greece, however. There is sufficient evidence from all over Europe prior to roughly the 15th century which cannot be overlooked (much of this evidence has been summarized/popularized by Basil Davidson). The equal portrayal of Africans and Europeans in representational arts, whether a king or a servant, as well as in Christian art–still extant statues and stained glass depictions of the Black Saints, for example.
An additional point of note is that there is evidence that there was no concept of “whiteness” or “European” prior to racist capitalism (this argument can be found in the works of Hosea Jaffe, Harry Chang, and Jan Carew, among others).

When we add to these arguments the positive evidence concerning the relationship of the rise of capitalism to slavery and racism as well as the role of modern science and western discourse (see below), the idea of a “natural” antipathy between perceived races doesn't hold much water.
Armed with the previous discussion, we can now turn to the theories of race antagonism and racism that look to the role of the development of capitalism and modern discourse for their origins. In his Capitalism and Slavery (1949), Eric Williams argues that slavery was necessary for the specific economic conditions of the European colonization of the “new world.” Plentiful land meant that the option was open to “free labor” to leave the plantation to take a piece of land to work for themselves. The logic of capital accumulation required that the cheapest labor be sought. After experimentation with both white indentured servants and Amerindian slaves, African slave labor was found to be the most profitable labor force. Williams explicitly argues that slavery did not result from racism, but rather that the conditions of colonial capitalism required slavery, and that it was the cheapness (profitability), not the color, of African labor which led to the Enslavement (Atlantic Slave “Trade”). And it was this Enslavement and production based on slave-labor that gave rise to racism (as an ideological justification).
The theoretical argument for the capitalist roots of race antagonism reached its early zenith in the work of Oliver Cromwell Cox. In his Caste, Class, and Race (1949) he argues that the phenomenon of race relations “is the phenomenon of capitalist exploitation and its complementary attitude,” and that racial antagonism has its rise only in modern times.
Cox looks at various cultures in history to see if there can be found race antagonism. The traditional caste system of India was not a racially defined system. Caste, Cox argues, is an aspect of culture prejudice; it is not defined by distinguishable physical characteristics as race prejudice is.
The Hellenic Greeks, he says, had a cultural notion of belonging: “barbarians” were welcomed to the extent that they participated in Greek culture, and they intermarried freely with Europeans, Asians, and Africans. He notes the development of cosmopolitanism under Alexander, under which there were great efforts to assimilate the “barbarians.” Here there was an “estate” not a racial, distinction, which found its philosophical basis in stoicism.
Cox finds that the Romans also lacked race antagonism. Their norm of superiority was one of culture and class defined by the notion of Roman citizenship, which was gradually extended to the municipalities of the empire. Slavery for the Romans was not racially governed, and there were no racial laws governing the diverse mass of population. Intermarriage was forbidden between patricians and plebeians, but this was a social-estate and not a racial distinction.
In the Christian period between the First Crusade and 1492, Cox argues, there was what he calls a “Jew-heathen-infidel antagonistic complex,” but the distinction was a religious, not a racial one. Europe in this period was “hemmed in” on all sides by either the ocean or “heathens” and “infidels.” Trade with the East and Africa was dependent on Arab/Ottoman intermediaries. It was the attempts to eliminate the intermediaries, as well as a number of other factors (European technological stagnation, amines/plagues, serf uprisings/rebellions) that led to the Portuguese and other "explorations" down the cost of Africa and elsewhere. The Portuguese felt themselves superior to the African, not because of race, but because they were not Christians. Cox provides evidence to demonstrate that in this early period there was no belief in the cultural inferiority of the African, as they were sought as converts. Conversion was believed to make them “as human” as any others.
For Cox, the religious definition of equality was a key to the understanding of the rise of race prejudice. As long as conversion to Christianity equaled human equality, there would be a possible limitation on the exploitation of other peoples. The ruthlessness of the Portuguese in this period was rationalized on religious and not racial grounds. There was no theory in the Christian dogma of this period of inborn human inferiority.
Key for Cox were the “discovery” of the Americas and the papal bull of 1492-93 dividing the world's population and resources between Spain and Portugal. The bull of 1455 was still infused with the crusading spirit, but this later bull, Cox argues, marks the beginnings of race antagonism and race exploitation. Like Williams, Cox argues that Africans were not chosen to be slaves because of their skin color, but because African labor was the most productive relative to the cost. The logic of capitalist production and accumulation, competition and profitability, is what led to the exploitation of Africans and other people of color. Race relations are thus “essentially” class relations.
However, we certainly find in Cox the idea that has been more explicitly stated by Chang, that it is important to recognize the specificity of racism: while not a natural category, it is important not to make the mistake of abstracting from the "physiognomic rule" of racial determination. This is the social definition ascribed to inherited physiognomic traits. Chang finds the Marxian notion of reification useful here: relations are transformed into things– the reification of racial categories such as skin color makes it appear as though race relations are inherent in skin color.

Other analyses of capitalism and race oppression identify earlier beginnings, while agreeing in substance with the main themes of Cox's thesis. Jan Carew begins a bit earlier, in January 1492, with the fall of Granada and the destruction of thousands of the Moors' manuscripts by
the Spanish. In fact, though, the seven hundred years of African rule of the Iberian peninsula are further evidence against racial antagonism, and Cox insists that the Spanish hatred of the Jews, Moors, was religion and not racially based (see also Jaffe).
Cox makes the distinction between race antagonism and other concepts, such as ethnocentrism, intolerance, and “racism.” Ethnocentrism, which may be a function of group solidarity, and intolerance, which can be social displeasure with a group that doesn't conform to society, are not necessarily racial phenomena.
Racism, as distinct from race antagonism or exploitation, is a philosophy or ideology of racial antipathy. But Cox argues that this is often looked at as the substance of race antagonism, which he denies. Race antagonism is rooted in “material social fact,” “social facts and situations,” and the social organization of the society in which it develops. Racism, on the other hand, is about a system of rationalization, opinions and ideas, “verbalizations.”
This view can be said to represent a traditional Marxist analysis of the relationship between base and superstructure. Cox here presents a bifurcation between the “real world” of “material social facts” and the “world of ideas.” Such a view is problematic for those who seek to develop a non-deterministic position. As the late Peter Rigby argued in a recent (1996) essay, racism is nothing if not praxis. Again, it is not Cox’s characterization of either race antagonism or racism in and of themselves (although some of his language may be strong), but rather the relationship that he posits between them which is problematic.
This leads to an alternative view represented by Cornell West ("A Genealogy of Modern Racism" in Prophesy Deliverance!), and also Dona Richards/Marimba Ani (“European Mythology: The Ideology of “Progress”,” and Yurugu). West looks at the way in which the structure of modern discourse produced norms, values, and aesthetic and cultural ideals that produced white supremacy as an object of discourse. For West, the very logic of modern discourse “from its inception” defined notions of truth and knowledge that rendered certain ideas plausible and others impossible. The “epistemological field” of modern discourse “secretes” the idea of white supremacy and renders incomprehensible the notion of Black equality in beauty, culture, and intellectual capacity.
West makes it clear that his “genealogy” is not a comprehensive theory of the origins of racism, but rather an investigation of a neglected area. But he also states that traditional Marxist (reductionist) explanations, while not wrong, are not sufficient either. He takes the position that both discursive and non-discursive formations have immanent power, and there is “no direct correspondence” between them. Discourse cannot be seen as simply a reflection of the economic base.
There are three major features of modern discourse that West identifies as central to the understanding of how the structure of modern discourse gave rise to modern racism: the scientific revolution, Cartesian philosophy, and the “classical revival.”
The scientific revolution gave an authority to science in the realm of truth and knowledge. The key features of scientific understanding are observation and evidence. Bacon and Descartes were major promoters of the authority of science. In particular, Descartes introduced the notion of the primacy of the subject and the central role of representation. The classical revival, a renewal of appreciation of the aesthetic and cultural heritage of Ancient Greece, was part of the Enlightenment revolt against the authority of the church. In particular, Greek ocular metaphors came to dominate modern discourse. This led to the production of a “normative gaze” or ideal from which to compare and order observations.
The articulation of these three factors in modern discourse defined the method of science (comparing, categorizing of the value free subject), its authority (truth and knowledge), and its foundational values (the Classical ideal). They thus provided the acceptable authority for the idea of white supremacy.
This can be seen in the development of natural history, the aim of which is to observe, classify, categorize, measure, and order, animals and human bodies based on observable traits. West argues that the classificatory categories of race in natural history are inseparable from the genealogy of modern racism. They were first used by Bernier, followed by Linnaeus, and then Buffon. The latter argued that white was the natural color of man, with other shades being variations from the ideal.
Blumenbach made the aesthetic criteria of ancient Greece explicit in his system, where the most beautiful face was the one that approximated the “divine” works of Greek sculpture. The rise of phrenology and physiognomy marked what West calls the “second stage” of the emergence of modern racism. The ideal facial angle of Camper was that of the ancient Greeks, and he explicitly stated his aim was not only to advance his discipline, but to promote the admiration of classical Greek aesthetics to young artists. Like Winckelmann, he associated a beautiful face with a beautiful soul and character. Lavater also openly stated his belief that the classical ideals in aesthetics regulated classification and ordering of human bodies.
West argues that these factors restricted modern western discourse and disallowed any alternative to white supremacy. Thus, even among abolitionists and radical environmentalists, white is considered the ideal, and Black skin a disease, or a variation from the ideal.