The Problem
Racism: The practice of
discriminating against
ethnic groups different
from one’s own.U
ntil the twentieth century, virtually every society that ever existed
enslaved others. Early forms of slavery, such as those of Greece and
Rome, ensnared conquered nations without regard to race. By con-
trast, English colonists in the New World increasingly enslaved only black
African laborers, a practice that was used to explain the latter’s alleged infe-
riority. Such racismarose in a society professing strong belief in equality. As
Protestant Christians, Englishmen believed that redemption was available to
any convert; as revolutionaries, they believed that ‘all men are created equal’
and were therefore entitled to equal rights. Growing side-by-side with this
notion of equality was the darker reality of racism that justified the degrada-
tion and enslavement of Africans. This anomalous situation arose for economic,
cultural, political, and pseudoscientific reasons, all of which reinforced each
other.
While the origins of racism remain murky, it appears that prejudice
against blacks was accentuated in the Middle Ages when light-skinned Arabs,
Berbers, and Persians made sub-Saharan Africa the prime hunting ground for
new slaves. These Muslim traders had to push beyond the Mediterranean
world, which was rapidly converting to Islam, because Islamic precepts
barred the enslavement of anyone who was already Muslim. A unique long-
distance slave trade resulted in which millions of blacks were seized and sold
to far-flung lands, where they worked as servants, concubines, soldiers, min-
ers, and farmhands. In the process, Arabs lumped all dark-skinned peoples
of Africa into one general category – ‘blacks.’ Negative stereotypes surfaced,
with Arab intellectuals comparing ‘ugly and misshapen’ blacks to ‘dumb
animals’ who ‘dwell in caves... and eat each other.’ Apes were said to be
‘more teachable and more intelligent’ than blacks. Muslims reinforced this
racism with an Old Testament story in which the Hebrew patriarch Noah
cursed the descendants of his son Hamto be slaves. Muslim (as well as
Jewish and Christian) writers interpreted this ambiguous reference as a con-
demnation of black Africans. Indeed, the Arab word for ‘slave’ came to meanCurse of Ham: A biblical
passage used to justify
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