The Invention of Racism in Classical AntiquityThere was racism in the ancient world, after all. This groundbreaking book refutes the common belief that the ancient Greeks and Romans harbored "ethnic and cultural," but not racial, prejudice. It does so by comprehensively tracing the intellectual origins of racism back to classical antiquity. Benjamin Isaac's systematic analysis of ancient social prejudices and stereotypes reveals that some of those represent prototypes of racism--or proto-racism--which in turn inspired the early modern authors who developed the more familiar racist ideas. He considers the literature from classical Greece to late antiquity in a quest for the various forms of the discriminatory stereotypes and social hatred that have played such an important role in recent history and continue to do so in modern society. |
From inside the book
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... climate and can recover his original , normal color by returning to the temperate zone . Buffon suggested an experiment whereby a number of blacks would be transported from Senegal to Denmark and kept there in isolation and under ...
... climate of the characteristics of man as follows : " Ever since man began to settle under differ- ent skies and to move out of one climate into another , his nature has undergone changes ... these changes became so great and so evident ...
... climate could not account for race differ- ences , since " Negro men and Negro women , transported to the coldest coun- tries , still produce there animals [ sic ] of their own species . " Unlike Buffon , Voltaire believed in ...
... climate . Thus Kant's aesthetics are defined more nar- rowly and nationalistically than those of Buffon , who was willing to regard all of those living in the temperate climates he knew of as the most beautiful . 2 7 Some nineteenth ...
... climate , geography , or hereditary factors that cannot be influenced by men themselves . In other words , biological determinism should not be regarded as the essential ingredient of racist attitudes . Environmental determinism can ...