Genesis and evolution of factual-doctrinarian racism Quince Duncan Moodie Afro-descendant activism in the field of human rights Carlos Minott Maitland Genesis and evolution of factual-doctrinarian racism Quince Duncan Moodie Genesis and evolution of factual-doctrinarian racism 1. Background When in 1492 Christopher Columbus, seeking the East, found himself among the Caribbean islands, a new era started for mankind. One of the most problematic aspects of that so-called “discovery" was the encounter with the indigenous peoples. That “discovery” gave rise to an intense debate in Europe because the Europeans were unaware of the existence of those peoples. The nations, tribes and ethnic communities of the Bible are those that bore a relation to the major civilizations of Egypt and Babylon and to the Jews who were subjected to different forms of bondage in those lands. The European experience was mostly with Africa and the Middle East and to a lesser degree with Asia. To be found suddenly in the presence of peoples who until then were totally unknown created great confusion. It was asked whether the “Indians” were descendants of Adam and Eve. They were not mentioned in the Bible’s map of nations. This is how the doctrine of racism, as we understand it today, began to be developed for the first time in human history - what we have called factual racism, to distinguish it historically from ethnic discrimination and from pseudo-racist theories invented to attenuate the historical responsibility of this creation of Western civilization. Some scholars have claimed that the dispute between Homo Sapiens and the Neanderthals may be explained by racism. This is obviously a flimsy effort because there is no evidence that the struggle was justified on the basis of a racist doctrine. Others have seen a manifestation of racism in the confrontation with the Moors. That dispute, however, was never based on the idea that peoples of certain phenotypical traits are absolutely superior to others. For example, on the Islamic side Tarik, who invaded Spain in 711 with an army of 12,000 soldiers, was a dark-skinned African and on the Spanish side it was impossible to develop a theory of white superiority if at that time the Spaniards lost the war and were dominated for 700 years. (Von Sertima. 1993:4). It has also been argued that there was racism in the Crusades. It is true that in 1095 Pope Urban II called for combating the cruel “race” that had seized Jerusalem, but the definition of race did not have anything to do with the later concept. Rather the Crusades were rationalized in religious terms (Rebérioux in Comarmond and Duchet, 1972:163). Other scholars have equated the caste system in India with factual-doctrinarian racism. India was invaded by Aryans, who had white skin and who conquered and subjected the local brown-skinned population. The Aryans installed the caste system as a mechanism of domination and justified it mystically with ideas of karma and reincarnation. The writings in India, however, promoted the mixing of races, except for the untouchables, and, in any case, in India there was no theory similar to the Western doctrinarian racism, which is to say that they did not generalize the concept nor did they classify all humanity according to phenotypical traits. There are even Afro-descendants in India who were brought by an Indian emperor to be the palace guard (Harris 1971). There is also in the theoretical concert, a symphony of African “racism.” For example, there are those who see a typical manifestation of racism in the conflict between the Tutsi and the Hutu, inhabitants of Rwanda and Burundi in Central Africa. It is claimed that the Tutsi aristocracy, a minority, imposes its control over the Hutu and Twa majority on the basis of racial superiority (van den Berghe 1967:12). What is certain is that after the original invasion and conquest of the Tutsi, these peoples had lived pacifically for centuries, marrying among the races. They did not develop a doctrine of racial superiority until the appearance of Belgians and English who, by measuring skulls, established racial categories that the Africans did not have. The former thus created an elitist class for their own colonial purposes. Factual racism is doctrinarian. It turns out to be a process of superiority, suppression and a putting down of groups of human beings, based on socially-selected phenotypical criteria. Race and factual racism. Blackburn (in, Lang, Berel, 2000) insists that the concept of race is not biological. The word “race” has certainly been subject to many definitions. It is, undoubtedly, a concept loaded with a bad history. The word comes from the Italian razza (Marquer, 1969) and means family or group, a term that in turn comes from the Arabic ras indicative of origin or descendants. The concept was constructed socially, but its markers are phenotypical and, accordingly, communicable from one generation to another. The word “race” has meant many things throughout history. But the term, as it is used in this essay, refers to the physical differences that exist between groups of human beings, such as the form of eyes, skin color or type of hair. These traits do not arise spontaneously in the different human groups, but are a set of distinctive marks of a group that has a common territorial origin and all the evidence indicates that they are developed as by-products of the human being’s adaptation to a different environment. There is no question that those markers are transmitted genetically. Thus, the fact that the concept does not have a biological basis does not mean that races do not exist. Socially-constructed concepts are real –the Catholic Church is a social construct and it is real. It must, nevertheless, be made clear that the phenotypical features of a people do not have affect their moral, emotional or mental aspects, as racists have unsuccessfully attempted to prove. Nobody is more or less intelligent because of the phenotypical group to which he or she belongs. National, religious, geographical, linguistic and cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial groups and it cannot be proved that the cultural features of these groups bear any genetic relation with racial traits. “As it is common to make serious mistakes of this type in using in the current language the word race, it would be advisable not to use it when speaking about human races and to use the term ethnic groups.” (The UNESCO Courier, Vol. 3 Nos. 6-7: p.8). The Declaration that UNESCO adopted at the beginning of the 1950s was a political declaration, aimed at attacking the racist connotations of the word “race.” However, the difficulty of replacing “race” with “ethnic group” is that the factors that define an ethnic group and race are not the same. Ethnic group refers to the culture. The markers of the ethnic group are strictly cultural and are not transmitted genetically. Subsequently in 1978, UNESCO issued a Declaration on race and racial prejudice, which clearly establishes that “All human beings belong to a single species and are descended from a common stock. They are born equal in dignity and rights and all form an integral part of humanity.” (Art.1) The discrimination to which Afro-descendant groups in the Americas are subject is not because of their culture but because of phenotypical factors that have traditionally been used to that end. In most cases, important cultural differences do not exist between Afro- descendants and mestizos. In the majority of the cases, they belong to a single ethnic group, that is to say, cultural, but they still suffer specific discrimination. If, however, we attempt to renounce the concept of race, it would be necessary to assume that the human species can be grouped into phenotypically differentiated families, all with the same potential level of intelligence and emotional factors and all with the same attributes. In truth it is culture that is, in the final analysis, the factor with the greatest weight. The factual racism that developed during the period of European colonial expansion is unique in the history of humanity. It established, based on its concept of race, a universal doctrine of the hierarchy of human groups, attributing intellectual, emotional and moral value to such differences. In the end, the white race was defined as the superior race and the other races came to occupy places of subordination on the scale. 2. Factual-doctrinarian racism. 2.1 Genesis Racism is not natural. This psychologistic interpretation does not withstand rigorous analysis, despite being widespread among some contemporary social scientists. It is not true that racism can be explained on an alleged “fear of the other” by the “unknown.” The evidence is overwhelming that the natural feeling that prevails in human beings faced with the new tends to be curiosity. The accounts of European travelers to Africa during the times of exploration are abundant and affirm that theory; for example, those of “Mungo” Park, a Scottish explorer, who around 1795 lived in the region of the Niger River. When he entered a community, everyone abandoned what he or she was doing and surrounded him, amazed at his white skin and his straight nose. They thought that his nose was artificial. They even took off his clothes and hat, counted his toes and fingers to corroborate that he was actually human. A few days later, a delegation of women visited him in order to verify, by a direct inspection, if Christians were circumcised. (Northrup, 2002:13-14). Furthermore, thousands of white children in the Southern United States and the Caribbean fed on the milk of wet-nurses.