Is slavery the epitome of racism?
Actually I’d say the European and United States genocide of the Native Americans is the epitome of racism, we wiped out not one, but dozens or maybe hundreds of races. The Spanish seemed particularly nasty. Whole cultures annihilated. A whole continent with millions of people almost completely wiped out with just a few survivors forced onto reservations, our ancestors made the Nazis look like amateurs. American Slavery and the Nazi’s were pretty awfully racist too. Slavery in general is not racist, just evil. Most cultures in history enslaved their own race like the Romans did. There are more slaves now than ever in history despite it being illegal almost everywhere, but is spread out across all races.
I don’t know what’s useful in trying to choose what the ‘epitome of racism’ is, but I would say slavery is the epitome of racism in the US because it’s the ultimate example of what I consider the definition of racism to be. A society in which one racial/ethnic group benefits at the expense of the rest, and is awarded privileges based only on their racial/ethnic status. Whites physically benefited from the actual hard work Black slaves did. That’s the barest example of my definition of racism. Blacks were considered only fit to be slaves because they were thought to have low intellect, no self-control, no discipline. These qualities were assigned to ALL Black slaves because of their Blackness. Some Whites may have been of low intellect or had no self-control, but those qualities were not because of their Whiteness, it was in spite of their Whiteness. That is what racism is. That is why I think slavery in the US is the “epitome” of racism.
