PAT MATHEWS wrote: > > Don't malign the 1300s that way. The High Middle Ages, while it had > many other faults, was far less racist than the Age of Exploration. > Their official stance on the subject was the Catholic Church's "We > are all children of God and therefore all brothers," (though - > considering their class system - some were surely older brothers and > some younger) - and their role model was the Roman Empire. Mallory's > Knights of the Round Table (quite a bit later, but still...) > included a couple of dark-skinned Saracens. Now, by Shakespeare's > time, color had become an issue. (Not to mention that Othello was > culturally North African, which explains a lot about his willingness > to believe the worst of Desdemona.) > > It was meeting people from other cultures, most of whom were darker > than the explorers,that brough racism back into a world in which it > had been minor or nonexistent since the Roman Empire. > I don't think it was "meeting" that made racism. A curious note: it seems that the Portuguese Colonial Empire was very un-racist; there are reports of a potential marry arrengment [unfortunately, it didn't happen - maybe the world would be much less racist otherwise] between a Portuguese Crown Prince and a black African Princess [daughter of a Kingdom that had just converted to Catholicism].
But they were also religious fanatics, and justified the slavery of brazilian natives because they were anthropophagous, which made them soulless. But was there _racism_ in Ancient times, except the basic "we are the people, the other are animals"? I think racism entered Western Civ based on a misinterpretation of the Bible, labeling black people either with the Mark of Caim or as descendants of (Noe's son - not Sem or Japhet - dunno his English name). Alberto Monteiro _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
