The Development of White Supremacy
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Welcome to Sociology Level 1, Lesson 4: The Development of White Supremacy
If you haven’t studied slavery before, check out our History Level 1 lessons on The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
In this lesson, you will learn about:
The origins of racism and white supremacy
Western Christianity as an ideological template for white supremacy
Race science and the “Negro race”
White supremacy shaping global politics
Objectives
By the end of this lesson you will understand:
Where racism came from
Why white supremacy was developed
How Western Christianity was used to further white supremacy
The “Curse of Ham”
How science developed institutional racism
How white supremacy is the central ideology in global politics
Additional objective for those who have studied Political Science Level 1
By the end of this lesson you may understand:
How white supremacy has come to determine the international division of labour
The myth of white supremacy has shaped global politics for the better part of 400 years. Genocide, enslavement, colonialism and segregation could not have been possible without the invention of the white race. However, the various European tribes that are considered white today were not always racialised as such.
During the empires of Ancient Greece and Rome, the concept of race and therefore whiteness was practically non-existent. People acknowledged the differences between groups, and some even insulted entire groups in their literature, but there were no ideas about a racial hierarchy. In fact, the Ancient Greeks and Romans saw African people as being more “civilised” than the people of northwestern Europe!
It wasn’t until the Arab invasions of North Africa and their subsequent enslavement of African populations that anything resembling racism emerged. In the Islamic world, slavery was common, and even Eastern Europeans were forced into servitude. However, there were far more African slaves, and they were often treated harsher, given the worst jobs, cost less and, as many of the enslaved were women, considered less beautiful. Slaves with white skin were considered to be more valuable and more intelligent.
When the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade began, white supremacy and the invention of race were yet to be codified. European fears and prejudices towards Africans were present, but the idea of a racial hierarchy had not yet taken root.
This began to change with the use of the Bible. Genesis 9:18-25 tells the story of the “Curse of Ham”, where Ham, Shem and Japeth - the sons of Noah - encounter their father naked. Noah, upon deducing that Ham did not cover his naked body, curses Ham and all of his offspring to be slaves for eternity. Despite the verse being over a thousand years old and not mentioning Ham’s colour, it was used to develop the mythology that Black people were the children of Ham and therefore eternal slaves.
Early on during plantation slavery, the colonisers arriving from Europe, as well as their indentured servants, were not defined as white. Instead, their census data defined them based on which area of Europe they were from. White servants and Black slaves were forced to work in close proximity, and this caused alliances to be formed, most famously during Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676. This rebellion saw what would today be called a multi-racial alliance against the British governors of Virginia.
European ruling elites began to learn from this however, and gave privileges to the indentured servants based on their colour. The indentured quickly began to identify more with their oppressors, and wilfully joined the elites in the oppression of Black people. Codes and laws were written by elites that protected white Christian servants from the harshest treatments. The Barbados Slave Code of 1661 provided the legal basis for white supremacy and racist practices, and this code was exported to other colonies.
As colonies were ruled by different European powers, the emergence of white supremacy did not occur simultaneously among every region. However, by the 1700s white supremacy was written into law and whiteness had become a metaphor for power.
In many colonies, those with any amount of African blood were seen as “tainted” and therefore suited to eternal slavery. Saint-Domingue had over 100 variations of Blackness and Brazil had 500 variations! This preserved the newly developed invention of the white race.
The 1700s then saw the emergence of “race science.” European philosophers such as G. W. F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant, David Hume and Adam Smith, and scientists such as Carl Linnaeus and Georges Cuvier set out to prove the superiority of whites and the inferiority of Africans. Here, the “Negro race” was scientifically constructed with the use of no science at all.
The Negro became 3/5ths human and more closely related to a gorilla or orangutan than a white person. Their supposed innate stupidity and genetic inferiority made them suited for slavery, as it was said to be scientifically proven. Attached to this was the codification of the white race; the benevolent, intelligent, beautiful, happy, genetically superior race that emerged from Europe.
Now that white supremacy was both approved by law and considered scientific fact, propaganda was used to project this myth. All of humanity’s scientific, cultural, and political advances were done by the white race. African history and culture was erased or attributed to the white race through fabricated literature. A hierarchy of the four races was produced; The white race at the top, the yellow (East Asians) and red (Indigenous Americans) races in the middle, and the Negro race at the bottom.
White supremacy permeated every aspect of European and American society, as they based their political and social structures around this myth. Europeans that faced oppression from other European powers, such as the Irish, still held onto their supposed genetic superiority and became oppressors once in the Americas.
Europeans projected and imposed the myth of their supremacy everywhere they colonised, reorganising the political and social structures of other nations to fit the narrative. Capitalism was born from white supremacy, as Europeans and their American and Australian descendants collectively destroyed entire kingdoms and invented new nations using the myth of their innate superiority.
The culture of white supremacy was instituted in these new nations during a process called globalisation, and the legacy of this is seen today. Western science and the political system of capitalism have been adopted by the rest of the world as if they are irrefutable facts of life. The rest of the world also strives to get as close to whiteness as possible. Throughout the Caribbean, West Africa, East Asia and India, skin bleaching, cosmetic surgery and an elevation of those with lighter skin are common. In China, people even use umbrellas to stay out of the sun as they try to keep their skin as close to white as possible.
Today, white supremacy is maintained both as an ideology and a political system through the structures that were developed in the past. White international financial institutions, collective governmental groups such as the United Nations, the European Union and NATO, and the distorted education system all serve to maintain global white supremacy. Biological white superiority is no longer overtly declared as hard science, but the imposition of white culture globally has ensured white privilege has remained. The supposed inferiority of Black people is less often spoken of in scientific terms, but in sociological terms. Black culture, the Black family and Black people’s “negative mentality” are now the reasons for innate Black inferiority.
The very idea of white supremacy is attached to Black inferiority. It declares “I am because you are not.” This in turn forces white society to become obsessed with keeping Black people down, as if Black people were ever allowed to freely disprove their inferiority, the notion of white superiority would cease to exist. As such, white society is in many ways a slave to Black excellence, constructing as many obstacles as possible to deny its existence.