Classical definition of racialism

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This article focuses upon the classical, pre-modernist definition of racialism. For the modern convention, please see racialism.

Racialism is the belief in the superiority of a particular race. ¹ In Classical Antiquity, the ancient peoples, intimately living within nature or the cosmos, recognized and understood the heirarchy inherent or better yet imbeded in nature. They themselves being a part of nature had stratified societies and a class of nobles. Thru the principle of macrocosm/microcosm, as there are aristocracies within eace nation, there is an aristocracy amongst the races of men. In a world of diversity, some having different racial characteristics rise and others stagnate. It is simply an observation of nature and part of common sense.

The phrase "Classical definition of ..." is appended to the word in order to show what a traditional person would think and know. Since the concept is under attack, the phrase "classical definition" is to separate it from ideological modern definition and to counter the later-day deconstructionism of this term.

Contents 1 Classical Antiquity 1.1 Bible 2 Modern era 3 Occurences of the word 'racialism' 4 Quotes 5 See also 6 References 7 Bibliography

Classical Antiquity

Many ancient people in Classical Antiquity were ethnocentric; i.e. the Ancient Greeks, the Hebrews (or Jews) and the Romans. Furthermore, they did not think it wrong to view their group as superior to others. When confronted by claims from other groups of superiority, they did not use the leveling charge of ethnocentrism, (post 1960's Western Culture meaning) but by refuting such claims. ³

The Ancient Greeks saw themselves as superior to Asiatic races, i.e. the Persians, Medes, Egyptians, due to their ability for self-government whereas all the Asiatic forms of government were monarchical despotism, a form of tyranny.⁴ Moreover, the Ancient Hellenes viewed themselves as civilized, living with law, whereas they saw their northern neighbors and some other races as uncivilized, or without law.

Plutarch records how certain races were ranked according to their mourning rites. The amount of self-control excercised to withstand mourning was the gauge of social standing. Lesser the degree of mourning, the higher one was on the scale of superiority.

"They say that the lawgiver of the Lycians ordered his citizens, whenever they mourned, to clothe themselves first in women's garments and then to mourn, wishing to make clear that mourning is womanish and unbecoming to decorous men who lay claim to the education of the free-born. Yes, mourning is verily feminine, and weak, and ignoble, since women are more given to it than men, and barbarians more than Greeks, and inferior men more than better men; and of the barbarians themselves, not the most noble, Celts and Galatians, and all who by nature are filled with a more manly spirit, but rather, if such there are, the Egyptians and Syrians and Lydians and all those who are like them." ⁵

Bible

Racialism is a given fact in the Bible. In the LXX, Book of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 36.10-13, the writer, a Hellenized Jew, or a Greek convert to Judiasm, wrote down that God created an heirarchy out of the races or nations of the earth.

"And all men are from the ground, and Adam was created of earth. In much knowledge the Lord hath divided them, and made their ways diverse. Some of them hath he blessed and exalted, and some of them hath he sanctified, and set near himself: but some of them hath he cursed and brought low, and turned out of their places. As the clay is in the potter's hand, to fashion it at his pleasure: so man is in the hand of him that made him, to render to them as liketh him best."

This can be seen in the twin birth of Jacob and Essau. In theSeptuagint, Genesis 25.23, it reads, "And the Lord said to her, There are two nations in thy womb and two peoples shall be separated from thy belly, and one people shall excel the other, and the elder shall serve the younger". Here two males exit the womb, one is from birth blessed with being superior than the other. That God picks and chooses to exalt one over another.

The Bible teaches that God creates diversity and He picks some to excel and others to be average. This characteristic is attached to the soul.

(q.v. main article: Israelite/Jewish racialism)

Modern era

Occurences of the word 'racialism'

• "The two principal planks in the party platform are opposition to all racialism and cooperation with the government." 1907 ²

Quotes

• "Cream rises to the top". an agrarian saying
• "Our ancestors were not paralyzed by guilt. Confident in their culture and civilization, they believed in their superiority over what Kipling had called the �lesser breeds without the law.�"—Patrick Buchanan, State of Emergency, The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America

See also

• Pecking order

References

1. Oxford English Dictionary, OED
2. Daily Chronicle, 2 Jan. 6/5 (OED)
3. Cosgrove, Charles H., "Did Paul Value Ethnicity", The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 68,2006. pg 270.
4. "...for because the barbarians are more servile in their nature than the Greeks, and the Asiatics than the Europeans, they endure despotic rule without resentment." The term Asiatic in English, is "Ασιαν" in the Greek. Politics, Aristotle, Book III, 9, �3; 1285a 20; Loeb, pg 249
   1. Scientifically, Egpt is not an Asiatic race, in the Greek world view, it was lumped in with the rest. The similarity being that they had the same form of government as the rest.
5. Hellenistic Commentary to the New Testament, edited by M. Eugene Boring, Klaus Berger, Carsten Colpe, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1995. pg 470.
   1. Plutarch, Moralia, "A Letter of Condolence to Apollonius" 112-13.

Bibliography

• A.N. Sherwin-White, Racial Prejudice in Imperial Rome, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1967).
• Benjamin Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004).
• Frank M. Snowden, Blacks in Antiquity: Eithopians in the Greco-Roman Experience, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970)
• W. C. van Unnik, "Christianity and Nationalism in the First Centuries of the Christian Church" in Sparsa Collecta: The Collected Essays of W. C. van Unnik, part 3 (NovTSup 31; Leiden: Brill, 1983).