He's right and I think you should read it as well.i know my essay on race and the enlightenment is making the rounds again because i’m getting a bunch of extremely angry email about it. it’s a good essay, i think. you should read it! https://t.co/atDLdujBnx— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) February 24, 2020
Ahem
Racism rests on two basic assumptions: that a correlation exists between physical characteristics and moral qualities; that mankind is divisible into superior and inferior stocks. Racism, thus defined, is a modern conception, for prior to the XVIth century there was virtually nothing in the life and thought of the West that can be described as racist. To prevent misunderstanding a clear distinction must be made between racism and ethnocentrism ... The Ancient Hebrews, in referring to all who were not Hebrews as Gentiles, were indulging in ethnocentrism, not in racism. ... So it was with the Hellenes who denominated all non-Hellenes—whether the wild Scythians or the Egyptians whom they acknowledged as their mentors in the arts of civilization—Barbarians, the term denoting that which was strange or foreign.If someone made it up, our children can forget it. I am confident of this as they have forgotten every other bleedin' thing I have tried to tell them.
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