If you look at how racism was created, it was used to demean people who were different so you could justify othering and them oppressing them. The greeks essentially invented racism, claiming their light-brown tones indicated they were at the perfect temperature for their superior brains, and that meant anyone of a lighter or darker skin color had their place in the world as inferior slave. From what we can tell, oppressive and demeaning othering language was created and used for the sole intention of helping along social and material oppression:
“Aristotle, who lived from 384 to 322 BCE, concocted a climate theory to justify Greek superiority, saying that extreme hot or cold climates produced intellectually, physically, and morally inferior people who were ugly and lacked the capacity for freedom and self-government. Aristotle labeled Africans “burnt faces”—the original meaning in Greek of “Ethiopian”—and viewed the “ugly” extremes of pale or dark skins as the effect of the extreme cold or hot climates. All of this was in the interest of normalizing Greek slaveholding practices and Greece’s rule over the western Mediterranean Aristotle situated the Greeks, in their supreme, intermediate climate, as the most beautifully endowed superior rulers and enslavers of the world. “Humanity is divided into two: the masters and the slaves; or, if one prefers it, the Greeks and the Barbarians, those who have the right to command; and those who are born to obey,” Aristotle said. For him, the enslaved peoples were “by nature incapable of reasoning and live a life of pure sensation, like certain tribes on the borders of the civilized world, or like people who are diseased through the onset of illnesses like epilepsy or madness.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
This was repeated on africans during the slave trade and on indigenous people during the genocide-colonization, and many many other times. Demeaning language serves as othering propoganda that allows oppression to be the norm.
It's a really good book. https://b-ok.cc/book/2952220/92fe7f
Multiple things can normalize racial violence. I would also argue racial slurs are violence too. It was a comparison not a 100% nuanced history of slurs and violence.
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If you look at how racism was created, it was used to demean people who were different so you could justify othering and them oppressing them. The greeks essentially invented racism, claiming their light-brown tones indicated they were at the perfect temperature for their superior brains, and that meant anyone of a lighter or darker skin color had their place in the world as inferior slave. From what we can tell, oppressive and demeaning othering language was created and used for the sole intention of helping along social and material oppression:
This was repeated on africans during the slave trade and on indigenous people during the genocide-colonization, and many many other times. Demeaning language serves as othering propoganda that allows oppression to be the norm.
It's a really good book. https://b-ok.cc/book/2952220/92fe7f
This is super informative, thank you
<3 np comrade
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Multiple things can normalize racial violence. I would also argue racial slurs are violence too. It was a comparison not a 100% nuanced history of slurs and violence.