why+was+race+was+created?

Have you ever thought about why race was created? Why some people weren't thought of human beings at all just because of the color of their skin? How people used their race against others? I think that people should get past the idea of race because it has made certain types of people be discriminated against, hurt and even killed in some cases. Throughout history it has been shown again and again that people were judged by their skin color like in slavery all over the world at one time, and even some class systems were based on race. One example of a race based class system would be America during the time that we had slaves. When America still had slaves, the class system was anyone who was European was on the top of the class system but anyone who was African American were considered unequal and were always on the bottom of every class system no matter where you went in America.

The period of the Renaissance and Reformation was also the time when Europeans were coming into increasing contact with people of with darker skin in Africa, Asia, and the Americas and were making judgments about them. The reason that the Europeans thought that they could justify their actions of making African Americans slaves was because they were heathens, which meant that they didn't believe in God or the bible. Religion was always very important in societies and they used religion against the blacks in other ways too. Ham, they said, committed a sin against his father Noah that condemned his supposedly black descendants to be "servants unto servants. To read more by George Fredrickson click here to read “[|The Historical Origins and Development of Race]”. George Fredrickson was a historian who gave people a new perspective on race relations in the United States and in South Africa. He wrote a book called “White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History”, and it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A lot of times people seem to use race or the color of a person’s skin to categorize them before they even know them. After 9-11 for example many people would discriminate against Muslims because many United States citizens thought they were all terrorists and should all be killed but they learned that everyone is different and they shouldn't be discriminated against. In 400 BCE the Greeks accepted everyone into their cities to be Greek as long as they could adopt their customs. In class we had debated about whether or not we were more advanced than people who lived hundreds of years ago and perhaps they were. They were able to look past things like skin color and accept people as long as they could fit into their society they didn’t care. The renaissance was in the 14th-16th century I couldn’t find very much on race in between the ancient Sumerians which was around 3000 BCE and the European Renaissance, which started around the 14th century. However I found that even in Sumer there were racial inequalities because there were slaves, mostly blacks, who barely had any rights at all. Although not all slaves were necessarily black many of them were which shows that the rest of the people considered them unequal to themselves. In the European Renaissance, as I said before, was when Europeans were coming into more contact with the darker skinned people of Africa, and they thought that they were completely different than them and didn’t want anything to do with them at first but then later they decided that since they "weren't important" they should just make them their slaves and make them do the things that they didn’t want to do around their houses and farms.  [] Above is a picture of a slave who's master is taking the baby away from it's family. This shows that not only did white women and children not have many rights, but they at least had freedom. The slaves didn't have many rights and they couldn't keep their families together because to the slave owners they were just property and they weren't considered people so they could do whatever they wanted with them. Slavery was found in civilizations as early as Sumer. Mostly just the kings had slaves at first but overtime the people in the higher classes wanted slaves of their own and it soon became a normal to have slaves. Slaves were obviously the lowest in the caste system. Although, not only were slaves blacks but they were also prisoners of war, and people who had a lot of debt and couldn't pay it off. By looking back on Ancient Sumer you could tell that women did not have the same rights as men since husbands could sell their wives into slavery and parents could sell their children, which shows that children didn't seem to have a lot of say in the matter. You can also tell that there probably wasn't any child services back then since people could just sell their children into slavery. [] [] In the picture above there is a white family and a black family. We are all people no matter how you want to categorize us we are all human beings, some people can categorize people into different races but we are all alike in many ways. Even today, even though a lot of people still think that race is useful and that we should keep it, some people are starting to question it more and more and I think that they should because, as stated part of the article above, people sometimes only use it to stereotype people or to feel better about themselves. It seems as though it is human nature to categorize things to make it better for us just like people did in ancient civilizations and what some people still do today, thousands of years later. Back then people probably judged people by their status in society just like many of the people do nowadays and I think that although we can't help it sometimes, we should all try to not judge and just accept people for who they are just like the ancient Greeks did in 400 BCE. I think that if people got past the whole race issue of everyone judging everyone else, the world would have a lot less problems and I think that if we do that we could have a better place to live in. []

Now that I have researched about how race and racism was all started, one thing that I would like to pursue is what is the future of race because in my last paragraph I talked about how race was in the past, and how it is now but I wonder what it will be like 50 or 100 years from now. I think that overtime people will realize how race doesn't matter.

AnnBibKalin