Did the Sahara cause Black-white racism and affect how we view race?

[Az]

What exactly is the connection between building ships and, say, textile mills?

Concentration of capital and financial institution, skilled labor, engineering resources, possible connections of engineering in academia and industry come to mind.

[Dinner]

The north had geographic reasons for factories. At the time, the primary source of power was from rivers.

This is true even at the time of the revolution. Even back then industry was growing in the north due to more water power being found in the north (thus making industry possible before the wide spread use of steam power) plus as others have pointed out the climate and soil of the north made farming less profitable making it more desirable for people to figure out other means of making money. That last issue also meant fishing and thus ship building also became more attractive in the north which lead to things like trade and greater capital accumulation. To compare in the south anyone with any money bought slaves and more land to increase the scale of their agricultural production.

The huge agricultural plantations did make plenty of money but it doesn't lend itself to industrialization as the geography of the north did for reasons stated above.

[Whoha]

Who eviscerated Confederates?

Frankly, we weren't harsh enough. Should have occupied their asses til the 1960's. The moment Reconstruction ended, they started that Jim Crow BS.

If the reconstruction had continued on for much longer most of the northern states would have flipped to the democrat party(which is a sign that you're being pretty damned harsh incidentally), and likewise would basically have had the complete opposite of the effect that you'd want. The radical republicans kept their political enemies disenfranchised for as long as was possible.

Lost capital can be replaced relatively quickly after a war. It certainly didn't take that long for Japan to recover after its population was actually eviscerated in WWII.

when the victor invests in such instead of imposing a horridly corrupt government on the vanquished, sure.

[giblets]

when the victor invests in such instead of imposing a horridly corrupt government on the vanquished, sure.

The "horribly corrupt government" did give grants for the construction of too many railroads but that's the opposite of "not investing in such". You haven't provided much evidence that the government actually stopped capital from being invested in areas where it would earn a high return in the South.

[Dinner]

Remember. Southerners are always victims even when you give them free ****.

[giblets]

The Republicans did have the audacity to suppress Ku Klux Klan violence so that the black vote wouldn't get suppressed and Republican candidates would be competitive in elections. Outrageous.

[molly bloom]

Benjamin Isaac published 'The Invention Of Racism In Classical Antiquity' a few years ago:

Pierre L. Van den Berghe, an American anthropologist, also gives a narrow description of racism: "It is important to stress that racism, unlike ethnocentrism, is not a universal phenomenon. Members of all human societies have a fairly good opinion of themselves, compared with members of other societies, but the good opinion is frequently based on his own creations. Only a few human groups have deemed themselves superior because of the contents of their gonads."42 This concept of racism has clearly been determined by its use in recent history, in the 1930s and 1940s, and Banton and Van den Berghe have formulated their definition to make it fit this particular historical situation. Their approach would make it futile to look for racism anywhere but in modern, western civilization. It assumes that there are forms of chauvinism, prejudice, and discrimination everywhere among humanity, but the term racism is here applied only to discrimination on the basis of presumed biological differences.

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i7737.html

[molly bloom]

When the bronzes of Ife were discovered in the 19th Century, various ludicrous explanations were offered to console those who thought black Africans couldn't possibly possess the minds or skills required to conceive and create such astonishing art...

...and in earlier times, David Hume (1711-1776)
who had never been to Ife, wrote:

I am apt to suspect the Negroes, and in general all other species of men, to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was any civilized nation of any other complection than white, nor even any individual eminent in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures among them, no arts, no sciences…Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men.

Essays: Moral, Political & Literary

[molly bloom]

I have to disagree somewhat with the notion that 'Othello' isn't about or concerned with Othello's race. We know that there were a number of Africans resident in London at the time Shakespeare was writing and acting ( even Henry VIII had an African trumpeter, John Blank) and that Elizabeth I had noticed their presence.


Iago:

Even now, now, very now, an old black ram
Is tupping your white ewe.

your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.

To the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor

These Moors are changeable in their wills: fill thy purse with money: — the food
that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall be
to him shortly as bitter as coloquintida. She must
change for youth: when she is sated with his body,
she will find the error of her choice:

I hate the Moor:
And it is thought abroad, that 'twixt my sheets
He has done my office:

The Duke:

And, noble signior,
If virtue no delighted beauty lack,
Your son-in-law is far more fair than black

Brabantio:

the sooty bosom
Of such a thing as thou—to fear, not to delight.

Venetian jungle fever, Elizabethan style.

[Jon Miller]

I said compared to even 1970 US.

A racist play in the early 16th century showed less racism than progressive productions of the 70s.

Conclusion: the extreme racism seen in the 18th, 19th, and 20th century was a result of the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

I expect that it is a result of the enlightenment coupled with colonialism. Suddenly, for the europeans to be 'guilt free', the native peoples must be less than human. So now one group not of your tribe gets selected as less than human (the native peoples).

Before it was just standard 'not of your people' behavior, and you would see Irish or what have you treated with more distaste in the 16th century than the African.

JM

[Whoha]

The "horribly corrupt government" did give grants for the construction of too many railroads but that's the opposite of "not investing in such". You haven't provided much evidence that the government actually stopped capital from being invested in areas where it would earn a high return in the South.

The South Carolina legislature spent something like 6x what the pre-civil war one did, and that money did not come from the north. The south has taken a long time to recover from slavery, the fallout of the aftermath of the civilwar and slavery, and the aforementioned reconstruction, but it did ultimately happen, and they've done a great deal better of a job than pretty much all of the other former slave states.

The Republicans did have the audacity to suppress Ku Klux Klan violence so that the black vote wouldn't get suppressed and Republican candidates would be competitive in elections. Outrageous.

And had the republican states in the north continued to support disenfranchising southerners they could have maintained the situation indefinitely. Again the problem had become republican competitiveness in the north that drove the end of the reconstruction.

[Dinner]

Part of that increase in spending is the result of an increase in revenue. In fact, I suggest you watch PBS's "Slavery by another name" documentary which can currently be watched for free online. It details how Southern states basically criminalized everything for blacks because they learned that even with slavery illegal convicts could be rented out to companies as laborers and the rent fees paid directly to the state. Convict rental fees became anything from 1/5th all the way up to half of the state revenue in several southern states so they'd literally arrest black men for nothing at all, trump something up, and then rent them out as convict laborers.

As an added bonus the Supreme Court said convicts could be striped of their right to vote (we still have this in effect) so Southern whites really did want to criminalize as many blacks as possible both to perminently remove the right to vote from them but also because selling their labor was so extremely profitable to the state.

[Dinner]

http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/

[The Mad Monk]

What exactly is the connection between building ships and, say, textile mills?

Sails.

[Al B. Sure!]

The radical republicans kept their political enemies disenfranchised for as long as was possible.

Yeah and also kept Blacks enfranchised for as long as Reconstruction was occurring. And 'radical'?