Is racism really a " modern " phenomenon?

My history teacher back in high-school claimed that racism is actually a pretty recent phenomenon tracing back to like the 1500-1600s, and wasn't really a thing in ancient times, atleast in the same way as now.

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  • It's not modern at all. The Romans considered themselves better than everyone else; the Greeks considered themselves better than everyone else. The Turks did, too, as did the Italians and Irish and the Germans. Nearly every country throughout all of history has been racist. It's this idea of "anti-racism" that's new.

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    • Anti racism is just racism.

      To be truely anti racist is just to not be racist..

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      • So basically you're saying that anybody who isn't prejudiced against people for their skin color is racist? This proves that i'm right about you being a racist bigot.

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      • I know what you're talking about, and you are correct, but that's not really what I meant.

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      • What ?
        Silly

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        • New western term for being racist but in the "reverse" our leftist politicans want that to be the new racism. Rather than just the color blindness ideal. Which is now ironically racist for stupid reasons

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          • You reinforce this ridiculous notion by incorporating it yourself. By refusing to call yourself Anti-Racist you’re only giving them power to dictate some fantasy definition of what that means.

            Same happens with the term Anti-Fascist. Now you morons won’t call yourself anti-fascist because of what some Anarchists did. You openly label yourself, at the very least, neutral to fascism, because of a trend designed by idiots.

            All you are doing is abandoning good honest morals and unification because you don’t want to be seen standing next to a very small but vocal (due to being propped up for shock value and divisionism) group.

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            • Hey I'm blaming the leftist for the nomenclature.

              I'm just the regular dude sifting through the most apt definitions. Racism and fascism is just a descriptor that you can remove by not being the descriptor. Adding the anti to it doesnt add to the definition.

              So I agree that the descriptions are not helpful but I refuse to be apart of the collective you assign to me. I already told you what faction used those words to describe themselves.

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        • I know what he means. In the West, some people like to take on the title of "Anti-Racist". In reality, it just means that they're racist against white people. I wasn't originally talking about that type of "Anti-Racism", though.

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  • It's not even close to a modern phenomenon. The internet has just made it easier for people to spread their bs so you hear it a lot more than you normally would.

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    • By modern, I'm not referring to the past decades, but the past couple centuries.

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      • The answer is still a definitive no. Your teacher doesn't sound qualified to teach if they don't even know that much.

        You think we weren't looking at neanderthals and going "man fuck those guys"?

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  • No, it was always there. Maybe it's been more prevalent in recent times because more people have been able to travel, meaning different races would come into contact with each other much more, but racism has always existed.

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  • Hard to believe an actual history teacher is that ignorant of history.

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  • The word is one of many words and phrases developed to fast track reprogramming. It doesn't actually mean anything. It's just meant to trigger an auto-thought switch installed in the human brain.

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  • Thug Lives Matter

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  • No racism has always existed but you didnt have "white" or "black" ppl until recently. It was about your ethnic group. For example Irish and English didnt get along. Germans had a lot of tribes that would fight

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    • Racism isn't something anyone can get rid of same with corruption.

      Both of those things will always linger no matter what you do.

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    • if we're getting really pedantic here then that's technically xenophobia but they're rooted in the same thing - same goes for colorism. 'groups of people hating other groups of people who aren't their group' has something that's been happening all throughout history and will continue to happen until the end of mankind. i'm sure if you showed a white man from the 1300s a black person he'd lose his shit.

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      • Not really, because they knew black people existed, and didn't really have a problem with them. For example, Balthazar, one of the Three Magi, has been traditionally described as a black man since at least before the eighth century. Anti-black racism specifically is, indeed, a more modern thing, based on the concept of the "Enlightened Europe" that needs to civilize all other cultures. While that was a sort of concept in Medieval times, it was more of "spreading Christianity" type thing, rather than anything else.

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  • Tribalism has always been a thing however there is some truth to the modern notion of race only being a few centuries old. We can trace it back to Gomez Eanes De Zurara.

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  • Racism is 100% a concept that has existed since we were living in caves. It was simple enough survival wise. Natural dislike towards people who looked different. That kept your tribe wary of other tribes that may have ill intentions.

    It's become a burden now because we all more or less speak the same language. We dont live in tribes anymore and the judge of personal charicter is a more accurate representation of a person than judging solely from skin color.

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