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The Development of Racism Essay

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The Development of Racism

Slavery's twin legacies to the present are the social and economic inferiority it conferred upon blacks and the cultural racism it instilled in whites. Both continue to haunt our society. Therefore, treating slavery's enduring legacy is necessarily controversial. Unlike slavery, racism is not over yet. (Loewen 143)

Racism can be defined as "any set of beliefs, which classifies humanity into distinct collectives, defined in terms of natural and/or cultural attributes, and ranks these attributes in a hierarchy of superiority and inferiority" (Blum 5). It can be directly linked to the past and still, centuries later, serves as a painful reminder that race continues to be one of the "sharpest and deepest …show more content…

A hierarchy of entire human groups developed. These groups were distinguished inherent characteristics, generally by physical appearance. Colonialism led to the classification of "otherness." "Others," meaning those peoples, who weren't of European descent, were viewed as both religiously and culturally inferior. Europeans were now able to rationalize the enslavement and "genocide" (Chromsky 135) of the Native American "savages" in part because they were not Christians. In 1610, natives who were once referred to as "ingenious," "industrious," and "quick of apprehension," were then described in the 1640's as being "sloathfull and idle, vitious, melancholy, [and] slovenly" (Loewen 124). By enslaving the native population, Columbus and the colonials of America were able to quickly and easily exploit the land. Whites would not allow Native Americans to acculturate because they were always regarded as "aliens" (Loewen 130). "Indian slavery led directly to African slavery: the first blacks imported there, in 1638, were brought from the West Indies to be exchanged for Native Americans from Connecticut" (Loewen 107). The first Europeans to come to the Americas were responsible for the early

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