Othello, etc. (was Re: Invention of the white race)

[Carrol Cox]

Two works which strongly suggest the late 18th century for the origin of
*modern* racism (at least in the U.S.) are Stephanie Coontz, *The Social
Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families 1600-1900* (Verso,
1988) and Barbara Fields, "Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States
of America," NLR 181 (May/June 1990). Also, Volume I of *Black Athena*
gives a good deal of evidence that anti-semitism only became racialist in
the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Finally, Thomas Laqueur, *Making
Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud* (Harvard, 1992) accumulates
evidence (Coontz offers similar evidence) that the rationale for male
supremacy only came to be biologically grounded in the 19th century.

Jan Carew in articles in *Race and Class* which I can't put my fingers on
just now argues for a 16th century origin in the Spanish invasion of the
new world. M.I. Finley in *Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology* argues
that ancient slavery was also rationalized by racism.

 Some sort of spontaneous "chauvinism," initial fear or dislike of the
"different," may have some sort of transhistorical basis, but that is
irrelevant to modern racism. In any case, *Othello* is certainly *not*
evidence for anything remotely resembling U.S. racism of the 19th century,
for only Desdemona's father is strongly offended by the marriage, and even
in his ravings there is nothing remotely resembling the core of racialist
ideology as it developed in the 19th century: the horror of miscegenation.
That requires a "scientific" basis. And of course the aggressive
anti-semitism of the *Merchant of Venice* is equally aggressively
*non-racialist*: the final punishment of Shylock is that he must allow his
daughter to marry (and become) a Christian. Could you imagine a
nineteenth-century play in which a black villain was punished by having to
allow his daughter to marry an aristocratic white man and become the
mother of his children?

Carrol

Matthew F. writes:


> 
> I'd start earlier, like 1492:
> 
> 1. "Discovery of New World" i.e. genocide, beginning of debates
> about who is human, who has a soul, Las Casas, etc. see, e.g.,  Jan
> Carew's articles on Columbus and the Origins of Racism in RACE & CLASS a
> few years back.
> 
> 2. Moors defeated at Grenada ending hundreds of years of African
> civilization of the Iberian Peninsula, and commencing a particularly nasty 
> period there.
> 
> 3. European Discovery of cape sea route to India, altering trade routes
> and global economic power relations.
> 
> 4. Papal Bull of 1492-93, dividing the world between Spain and Portugal.
> 
> I've seen some strong arguments that there was no "european" self concept
> or "white" self-concept prior to this period and the well known slaving,
> plunder, robbery, genocide, etc. that followed.
> 
> Plenty of primitive accumulation by 1500. I think some figures can
> be found in Hosea Jaffee's A HISTORY OF AFRICA, Zed Press.  The important
> points made by Marx in Capital vol. 3 on historical facts regarding
> merchant capital are relevant here.
> 
> On Thu, 28 May 1998, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> 
> > Speaking of the periodization, by 1600, the exploration of the 'new world'
> > had already begun, primitive accumulation had begun (for example, seen in
> > More's fictional comments on 'enclosure' in _Utopia_), England was on its
> > way to the world domination, the nationalist ideology was in its formative
> > stage, and the ideology of coloniaism with its need for racism was in its
> > making as well. The nature of racism has changed since then, but race was
> > certainly already being made.
> > 
> > This is a very interesting and important history to investigate, and when
> > we do so, we can see the simultaneous and mutually reinforcing emergence of
> > ideologies + social relations that have made class, race, nation, Europe,
> > and so on.
> > 
> > Yoshie
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
>