{"id":20311,"date":"2020-12-13T23:29:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T03:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=20311"},"modified":"2020-12-16T18:26:49","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T22:26:49","slug":"the-invention-of-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-invention-of-race\/","title":{"rendered":"The Invention of Race Was a Way to Justify Slavery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When was the invention of race<\/a>? How does the origin of race correspond to racism and slavery?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The invention of race did not come before slavery. In fact, the self-serving policy of enslaving Africans was justified by creating the notion of race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep reading to understand how the invention of race came about and the historical context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Invention of Race<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Race has only existed for about 600 years. Most people think that the origin of race as a concept came first, then people developed racist ideas<\/a>, and then, finally, people developed racist policies stemming from their racist ideas. However, the true order of events is different: policy created to further self-interest\u2014the lucrative slave trade of Africans\u2014came first, and only then<\/em> was race invented to justify the policy. <\/strong>Racist ideas came last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the fifteenth century, Prince Henry the Navigator wanted to get into the slave trade but didn\u2019t want to work with Islamic slave traders, who were enslaving a variety of people including Europeans, Arabs, and Africans. Prince Henry sponsored voyages to West Africa and focused the Portuguese slave trade on Africans. His ships explored new regions of the continent, including the feared waters around Cape Bojador. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because the Islamic traders were enslaving people from a variety of areas, their trading policies weren\u2019t racist. However, Prince Henry\u2019s policy, because it focused on a particular group of people, was <\/em>racist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1453, 20 years after Prince Henry had organized the African slave trade, the King of Portugal commissioned Gomes de Zurara<\/a> to write a biography of Prince Henry. Zurara invented the African race when he described the people being sold at a slave auction in Lagos, Portugal. He described the people as being different from each other in language, ethnic group, and skin color, but he lumped them into a single group of people<\/strong> who lived like animals and needed to be saved by civilized Europeans, who were inherently superior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, the \u201cIndian\u201d or <\/strong>negros da terra<\/em><\/strong> (\u201cBlacks from the land\u201d) race was invented by Portuguese and Spanish colonizers after they arrived in the Americas.<\/strong> All Indigenous people were lumped into this group. Alonzo de Zuazo, a Spanish lawyer, compared this race to the Black race, saying that the Blacks were strong and good at work while the Indigenous people were weak. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal of the invention of race was twofold: <\/p>\n\n\n\n