The Theory Of Race And Racism In The 17th Century

What is race and racism? As simple as it might seem, race has a historical construction justified by scientists, political figures and religion. During the reformation of the 16th century and 17th century, European Christian settlers had a key question to understand whether black or Native Americans had souls or even were human. During this time period, the two main dominate branches of Christianity among the settlers in the Americas were the Catholic church and Protest-Calvinist Church. The Catholic church was the first to accept that Blacks and Natives had souls and as a result killing them would be unjustified without reasonable cause. This acceptance by the Catholic church lead to a deep divide between the early settler, and as to distance …show more content…
However, for some slave masters, this would be a conflict of faith to keep other Christina in bondage over skin color. A new theory was needed to justify why these people were still in bondage after their conversion, with religion losing much of its power as an initial legitimizing agent of slavery due to the separation of state and church. The slave-based economy of the south began to adopt a racist exploitive system that leads to the development of biological and botanical theories that justified slavery based on skin color. In the 19th-century new social science theories developed across Europe, at the same time new ideas were being exchanged at a faster rate than before with scholars and thinker multiplying in number and mix all that in with the colonization of Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. To justify the killing and mass wiping of native people, philosopher used racial terms such as savages, semi-civilized, and a Social Darwinism approach to justify such acts. During this time, medical science also played a huge role in the development of race and racism. During the mid and late 19th century medical scientist justified the practice of surgery on blacks due to their supposed extreme pain tolerance. The believe that Blacks could not feel pain and other racist ideologies propelled by philosophers, doctors, …show more content…
Laws like the 1924 Integrity act and the Virginity Integrity Act reinforced the notion that mixed mirages were illegal and were in the books until as late as 2000. Other laws such as the Eugenical Sterilization Act in its conception and implementation involved multiple intersections of oppression. It composed all the characteristic of classism as it was forced on the poor, sexism as it was forced on women, ableism as it was forced on people with disabilities, racism as it was mainly forced on women of color. Another example of racist acts included when the US government and the local government of Puerto Rico sterilized 1/3 of the women population on the island via a massive campaign, subsidies, and the need for cheap women laborer free from childcare by industrial companies. These women were the guinea pigs of the early contraceptives, which were 20 times stronger than what we have today. The implementation of racist policies and a view that high rates of poverty among color ed people are due to lack of intelligence, socioeconomic background, cognitive underclass, and due to biological outcomes. That is race and racism in the American south and the wider world and the development of white supremacy and privilege out of racist