Racism

submitted by Death_By_Democracy from self.AskSaidIt

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[–]HugodeCrevellier 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Racism can be mere generalization, something between 'speciesism' (different species have different characteristics) and 'familialism' (children share characteristics with their parents). In the USA, the real ('indigenous') Americans having been essentially genocided away, the population there is no longer an ethnicity. These real Americans were replaced by assorted imported/foreign ethnicities, 'European-Americans', 'African-Americans', 'Asians-Americans', etc. So, of course, in the USA, to recognize the validity of racial/ethnic characteristics is an issue, a political(?) one, a contentious one in any case ... becoming a taboo.

[–]Musky 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

the real ('indigenous') Americans having been essentially genocided away

That's a common misconception, the native population was largely demolished accidently from disease. I'll post a couple other links, but check out this chart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_soil_epidemic

[–]HugodeCrevellier 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Some of it by accident , some of it on purpose, but the fact remains that the American Nations were essentially wiped out.

[–]StillLessons 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes. While the effect might have happened anyway with the European settlers carrying new strains, it is well documented that the Europeans were completely aware of the disease issue, and were intentionally using smallpox in particular as the biological weapon of its day, to the greatest extent they could figure out how to contrive.

Again, this might have happened whether they tried to do it or not, but to highlight "accidentally" the way Musky has is incorrect. At least some portion of the disease spread was absolutely intentional.