Re:IMDB deleted all negative user reviews for The Rings of P...
by Maursault on Saturday September 03, 2022 @09:17PM
(#32708643)
This idea of racism being a modern invention is merely an academic theory. There is no doubt there were periodic exterminations of Jews in classical antiquity and atrocities perpetrated against Jews throughout the Middle Ages. Antisemitism is racism.
Though the word "race" was probably coined in tandem with British Imperialism, Black slavery and the modern era, race, in fact, does not exist. Race is entirely a social construction, and regardless of the words used in antiquity, the same concepts were used to discriminate against, stereotype, repress and enslave peoples from the very dawn of civilization.
Race and racial ideology were developed in Europe, but it was in tandem with the modern era, not before it. Think 17th-19th centuries. It served a concrete purpose: to explain and justify how the leading European nations interacted with their colonial subjects. But there was no reason for race before colonialism, so it never developed because it would have served no purpose then.