What is the point of Racism? ... Whats underneath it all?
Well those questions, as some of you are aware, have complex answers! Like an Octopus with a thousand tentacles! But lets attempt to answer them anyway!
Why are theyre Racist attitudes in the first place? Or to put it another way, what drove White European Christians to view themselves as superior to non-Whites and to go around the world conquering or enslaving them for benefit and profit?
I don't know why they did that! But I'm damned good at speculating!
When the Romans first invaded Northern Europe circa 500 AD, they encountered Germanic tribes wearing animal skins and living in thatched huts! The Romans wore fine clothes lived in eLaborate stone building, lived by written laws and legal codes and had a high degree of civilization (aqueducts, indoor baths, etc) They looked on the animal skin wearing, thatched hut living Germanic tribes, as savages! Sound familiar! Thats the how the Europea ns who first invaded, I mean discovered America viewed the Indians when they first encountered them! But in this instance you have Whites looking down on other Whites as inferior! The Germanic tribes populated England and most of Northern Europe!
To make a long story short! Roman civilization was the dominant culture and power in that region and the world for about a thousand years! But as time went on the ruling class became indulgent, corrupt and lazy until the wild war waging savage, Germanic tribes became powerful enough to over throw what was left of the Glory of Rome!
Now here's where my speculations get psychologically interesting (at least to me!)
As a result of being treated as inferior by the Romans for hundreds of years, when these savages finally did over throw Rome, they over compensated for the inferiority complex they had developed by putting in its place a superiority complex that masked their feelings of cultural inferiority! It's like some one having murderous envy toward another they secretly admire finally getting the chance to knock them off and take their place!
These savage tribes started feeling really good about themselves! Like they were the Big Dogs! And they were the Big Dogs! Hadnt they just knocked off the superior culture of the once mighty Roman Empire!
They started seeing themselves as superior and but still had the need to keep that inferiority complex covered up! So it was easy for them to act-out their distain without guilt, on those ethnic groups they viewed as savage or inferior, because they saw the savagery and inferiority as coming from those groups, not from themselves!
The Whites in the U.S. inherited this cultural legacy of White Supremacy from the descendants of those savage tribes who immigrated to North America before the founding of the Nation! Northern European history and culture was so affected by Roman culture that, around the 11th century AD, the pope of tha t period and Charlemagne create a Second Roman Empire, The Holy Roman Empire! Now ruled by the once envious savage tribes! Today England has a parliament and the United States a Congress because they are both patterned after the Roman judicial system created by the cultural descendants of these savage tribes!
Further Speculation On Why There Are Racist Attitudes
Some Whites grow up in Racist home and social environments! Some have been brainwashed with Racist propaganda throughout their whole early Social development as kids! I've seen documentaries on the Klan, Neo-Nazis and other Racist groups that show parents with their 3,4, or 5 year olds at these rallies dressed in Klan robes, Neo-Nazi uniforms or other Racist attire, chanting Racist slogans and beaming with pride and enthusiastic approval of their children for doing so! So these are some of the way Racist attitudes are passed on from generation to generation and why theyre there in the first place for thes e kids!
What's the point of Racism? What's underneath it?
Whats underneath White Racism in this country is (to reiterate) the ideology of White Supremacy! Certain White European philosophers perpetuated the theory (as a result of Darwin's theory of evolution, for some of the reasons I gave above and for others to complex to go into in this article) that White people (especially White men because they dominated White society) were the pinnacle of the evolution of the human species and therefore racially superior and more privileged than all other races!
That philosophy was behind the exploitation of Africans for free slave Labor and the economic gain of White businessmen during the era of the slave trade! Africans were seen as subhuman in the evolutionary scale and therefore they weren't really enslaving or exploiting humans but something more like cattle or other beasts of burden!
When the United States Constitution was created the enslaved Africans w ere (for political reasons) only referred to indirectly as only 3/5th of a person! Most of the so-called founding fathers if not all of them, including Jefferson and Washington were rich slaveholders! The Constitution was obviously created to protect economic rights of the founding fathers not African Americans, American Indians, White women or any other non-White group for that matter!
As a matter of fact, in the early days of the United States before White Supremacy became the dominant ideology of the country, the only people classified as White were, White Anglo-Saxon protestants, who were English or descended from the English! Italians and others weren't looked upon as White until well after the slave trade was in full bloom!
The White supremacist philosophy and economic gain was behind the civil war! The southern states, who imported most of the slave Labor, whole economy was based on the slave trade and lots of people were getting rich or doing very well as a result of it! So they weren't too happy when certain conscientious Whites (like Lincoln), who may have thought Whites were racially superior to Blacks, but didn't believe it was right to enslaved their fellow man, wanted to end the profitable importation of slave Labor! So rather then have that occur, the political leaders of the slave states decided that they would no longer be part of the United States! Lincoln and other leaders said, You can't break up the Union of the United States! The slave states leaders said Oh yes we can! And that's how in a simplified way the Civil War got started!
Hitler was a White supremacist! He called the superior Whites, Aryans. He learned a lot of his ideas about racial superiority from the Racist science and philosophy of the slave trade and Jim Crow practices of the United States!
Another less familiar source of Racism is the Old Testament idea of the Chosen People of God who are more special to God than all other people! An d of course through much intellectual rationalizing by Racist Judeo-Christian intellectual Gods Chosen People were deem to be White! They convinced themselves and others that it was Ok to deprive Africans of their rights because they enjoyed a special privilege from God, a manifest Destiny, to dominate Africans and other non-White groups because they were God Chosen people!
But the underlying core of Racism is that White Supremacists dont want Blacks or other groups they view as inferior, contaminating their superior gene pool with their tainted blood! And White Racist men jealously defending their sexual dominance over White women! These two issues have sparked the most vehement White violence and hatred toward Black men! It made supremacist men feel sexually inadequate and inferior and an affront to their sexual dominance and pride if their White women preferred, what they saw as subhuman, genetically inferior men to themselves! They become enraged with hate filled, envy and jealousy toward Black men! Thus the formation of 'the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan as Chivalric order to protect the virtue of the flower of the White race (White women) from all those degenerate Black men whose only desire was to deflower them (Rape them)! Thus the thousands of lynchings of Black men during the late 18 and early 1900s in the United States (mainly in the southern states)!
You can see how over time this hate-filled jealousy would continue to reinforce its self and how it would be attractive to other White men, who wanted to see themselves as this chivalrous order of knights valiantly protecting the flower of the White race from the threat of deflowerment by the black beasts and the even greater threat of the tainting of their familys gene pool with the blood of these genetic ally inferior beasts of burden or predators!
These feelings, supported by White supremacist Christian doctrines, sent them on a religious crusade carrying out Racist violence with religious zeal against black men and any White women who dared to have sex or become romantically involved with them! (But it was ok if White men had sex with Black women!) The flaming cross of the Klan is a Christian cross! They see themselves as Christians and Jesus as their Aryan brother!
Now I went through all of that to give you some idea of the underlying concepts and ideology behind the point of Racism and what's underneath it from a psycho-social-historical point of view!
From a psychological view, the point of Racism is to make those groups who hold this view feel they are superior, better and more privileged than all other ethnic groups! It's kind of like one little kid saying to another that my dad is better than your dad! Sometime those who latch on to Racist ideas hav e unfulfilled needs for self-esteem, self-worth or some other lack that they're unconsciously attempting to fill or over compensate for but may not see in themselves or want to see in themselves! For others, it's just brainwashing, plain and simple! Or a combination brainwashing and other factors! There are usually complex factors involved in the genesis of any problem rather than just one! Especially a problem like this one!
That, in a very simplified way, are some of my thoughts why there are Racist attitudes in the first place but definitely by no means all of my thoughts on the subject! Or all of my knowledge on the subject! I've studied, pondered and researched this topic for about 20-30 years because, I was puzzled by all this racial hatred and why it keeps raring its ugly head and wanted to find out what it was is about! Why its so resilient!
Thats my thoughts!
What are your thoughts on my thoughts and speculations?
Copyright 2006 El-Veasey Pub lishing Inc
El Veasey has PhDs in Social-Politics, Psycho-Social Relationships, History of the Human mind and Religious Politics, from the University of Hard-Knocks, Ghetto Town, USA
Email: elveasey at yahoo.com
Blog1 http://el-veasey.blogspot.com
Blog2 http://lveasey.blogspot.com
Author:: El Veasey
Keywords:: Racist, Racism, White, Supremacy, Klan, Nazi, Slavery, Lincoln, Consitiution, Labor, God,
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