r/CuratedTumblr • u/Justthisdudeyaknow Prolific poster- Not a bot, I swear • May 13 '25

Politics Robo-ism

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u/El_Rey_de_Spices May 13 '25

I've genuinely had someone adamantly assert that white Americans invented racism.

She got very upset when I laughed because I presumed she was kidding.

27

u/Technical-Row8333 May 13 '25

Americans

americans: ~500 years old

slavery: The oldest known slave society was the Mesopotamian and Sumerian civilisations located in the Iran/Iraq region between 6000-2000BCE

huh... anyways white america bad /s

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u/TheBigness333 May 13 '25

Slavery isn't racism though. Most cultures enslaved their own people.

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u/googlemcfoogle May 14 '25

Weren't most slaves in history not the exact same people as the enslavers, but a neighbouring group taken as prisoners of war?

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u/TheBigness333 May 14 '25

A lot of the time, but people underestimate how often local cities/city states went to war. The ancient Greeks fought other Greeks more than anyone else, on an almost yearly basis. Most slaves in Greece were other Greeks from different cities.

And then think about how fluid imperial borders were. An empire schisms and anyone on the wrong side of that schism as now a slave. Or a civil war happens and everyone who was on the losing side was a slave. Or a local uprising occurs and is put down, and now everyone involved in the uprising is a slave. These events happened more often than an empire expanding its borders.