Page 234 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

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developed for the first time in the early modern era of contacts between the fairest-skinned northern Europeans
expansion, and—at least in this time period—only and the darkest peoples of the rain forest regions of Africa
among peoples of European descent. Rather than cul- or coastal South Asia, differences in skin pigmentation or
tural markers of difference, which are malleable and can hair texture are often noted in a matter-of-fact way. Con-
be overcome if some groups are willing and able to trary to the arguments of a number of Western scholars,
adopt the beliefs and customs of others, racial bound- which themselves may be expressive of ethnocentric pref-
aries are based on perceptions of somatic or physical dis- erences, European travelers did not necessarily admire
tinctions between human body types, which are seen to light-skinned peoples more than “tawny” or “black” ones.
be expressions of innate, biological divergence. Although In fact, numerous explorers explicitly commented on the
the physical attributes stressed by those who construct or beauty or well-proportioned bodies of both males and
adhere to beliefs in the racial distinctiveness of human females of peoples described as dark-skinned. For exam-
groups have varied considerably by time period and ple, François Bernier, one of the most famous French trav-
the society in which they are nurtured, racist thinking elers of the late seventeenth century, was one of the first
has almost always encompassed convictions that some writers to attempt to classify the different types of
peoples are inherently superior or inferior to others and humans he had encountered in his peregrinations. He
presumed—at least implicitly—that this state of inequal- had, however, very little to say about the basic human
ity arises from innate and immutable differences in types that he proposed in a rather desultory way, and was
intelligence. a good deal more interested in ranking the peoples he
had encountered according to which had the most beau-
The Genesis of Race tiful women, which included at the top of his list relatively
and Racism dark-skinned Egyptians and Africans. In a number of
Whether based on a sense of religious or material supe- accounts by other Western observers, peoples described
riority, European ethnocentrism in the fifteenth and six- as tawny or black are ranked above their lighter-skinned
teenth centuries CE was blinkered and self-congratulatory, neighbors in terms of their intelligence and the level of
but it was usually not racist in any meaningful sense of cultural development they have achieved. And few Euro-
the term. Until the late seventeenth century, humanity peans who traveled overseas made any attempt to link
was seldom divided into clearly demarcated categories by facial features or hair quality to more general assessments
European travelers or writers, and when attempts were of a people’s aptitudes or intelligence. Like differences in
made to distinguish human types, the criteria were invari- culture, physical variations were usually linked to envi-
ably vague and inconsistent. Physical differences between ronmental influences rather than seen as innate products
peoples encountered overseas were, of course, frequently of reproduction and biological inheritance.
described in considerable detail. But even in reports of

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