White People Were Invented
Racism is undeniably a cancer that has yet to be eradicated. We must discontinue completely our use of the term “race” and begin discussion about ethnic identity, cultural assimilation, and skin color. Race demarcation is an invented social construction that has poisoned mankind for hundreds of years and has had serious consequences. Claiming to be “color-blind” does nothing to address this problem. Color-blind racism is the denial of the real problem. Racist scientists in the 1700s invented the idea of “race,” and literally created a race that did not exist before that: the “White Race.” Before there was a white race or even a black race, there was no race at all. People were identified by religion, nationality, or culture. So-called whites were something else before Johann Blumenbach and Carl Linnaeus, 18th Century racist scientists, collapsed Western Europeans into whiteness. Why did this happen? The powers of that time wanted to create a united idea of their superiority (white supremacy), and in order to do so, had to take away European ethnic identities and create an invented race.
The ways in which racism embedded mental images are much too complex to deal with in this publication, but some information is crucial to understand the power of racialized thought. Dominating the minds of millions for centuries, this baked in thought process is both conscious and unconscious. All of the great Enlightenment thinkers were exposed to the false ideas about race—even the most liberal. Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (1754) did not truly embrace social justice for Africans or women. He thought women were incapable of scientific systematic thought. The so-called “champion of freedom” could not move beyond the dictum of thought that women could not be contributors to “works of genius.” He was stuck in a social belief system that was completely false.
In fact, almost all of those who we are supposed to distinguish as heroes and intellectual giants within our present educational system have been tainted with the ideas of racism and intolerance; Mark Twain, Plato, Kant, Jack London, and others furthered the aims of injustice, genocide, and ethnocide, and helped to ruin the world with their intellectual and flowery literature that provided a mask for their narrow-mindedness. Peter Roget, of Thesaurus fame, was even influenced by white supremacy and class inequalities. Roget’s word engineering, was greatly influenced by the father of scientific racism, Johann Blumenbach. His words hoped to move readers to accept the idea that white was good and dark was bad. He infused the English language with characteristics that fused white racism into everyday language. For example, nobility was equated with “gentleman” (plantation, slave owner gentlemen) while its opposite was tagged with “savage.” Roget positioned the word “Negro” with savage, denigrate, and of the night. Roget set out to create the language of white supremacy in a subtle way that was attached at the hip to the culture of white supremacy that became the everyday language of Americans.
Most people grew up with a ton of words that carry racial implications. Words matter! For example, the descriptive use of the term “frontiersmen” implies white heroes. The word “settler” hides the notion of racist thieves stealing land and killing people. The term ”Caucasian” was invented by racists and particular individuals, such as Johann Blumenbach in the 1700s, who provided the glue to crystallize all Europeans into whiteness. There were no “Caucasians” before they were invented. This false racial category was the binding force that produced fictionalized invented histories that were aligned with white supremacy.
