AHC: Early End to Racism

whitecrow

Banned
In a recent thread on how colonial empires could have survived to present day, one person suggested that had Europeans practiced “enlightened imperialism” and given native subjects citizenships, full rights and treated as equals to the Europeans than colonialism may have survived. Of course, given social customs in the golden days of empire building & Scramble for Africa, this proposition is ASB.

So what POD would be needed for European government during age of imperialism to have the same attitudes towards racism as modern western governments have (that is to say, condemn it)?
 
It's unlikely to have an earlier condemnation of racism, but if you lessen the slave trade (somehow) and don't let India and the Far East get screwed over you're as set as you can be before people decide racism is bad.
 
I thought that Racism still exists today?:D

It does but western nations seem to have an open condemnation in of it.

But I haven't really studied it in particular in western Europe, but I know this for a fact that my country still has it.


I bet rascism would have an easier time dieing off if people focused more on class A LOT MORE ON CLASS or some other issue than race will be a more smaller issue rather than a dormant one.


And if you want to have a less rampant form of rascism you need to create a stronger Africa and mid east. This way Europe in general will have a harder time colonising (if they can) to the point where Europeans will start to have a "a grudgingly respectful relationship with those two areas. It would also help if you can have Persia fight off the British and the russians. Kind of like the Japanese did to the Russians
 
The problem is, racism is not logical: It is a tool for maintaining privilege and power. No amount of non-threatening technological superiority, such as enjoyed in many ways by the Moġuls, Ming Chinese, Ottomans, Songhai or Inka, would be enough to make the European imperialists realize that they were wrong: If you were the other, all they respected was brute force and strength in war.

This is why in the Invasion of Aotearoa the British gave the Maori an unusual, if patronizing, level of respect during the Musket Wars: They were good at fighting.

On the other hand, the Inka were in many non-military (and military) ways far ahead of the Spanish but they were, or more accurately appeared to be, hesitant to fight and, being the Other, were not respected for their sanitation system, their aqueducts, their communications network, their economic superiority, their low rate of crime nor anything else.

And even when the Inka did begin to fight back, another key factor in European Colonialism was exemplified: The lack of ability to compromise. The Spaniards, like all European colonial empires, did not try to tolerate or compromise with their subjects but instead insisted that they were treated as "heathens" and such by way of their not being Christians; even during the Crusades, the Muslims, clearly ahead of the West at the time, were not really respected by many because their beliefs, however similar, conflicted with the demand of Christianity, and Abrahamic Religions in general, on a monopoly on belief.

This can be contrasted to the Indians, of which even the rather syncratic Moġuls were quite tolerant, while in the days of the Mauryan Empire their was essentially religious freedom on a level that Westerners today would respect or even admire. Similarly, China had it Great Buddhist Persecution but besides that the Confucian Religion did not demand a monopoly on belief, as can be seen with the harmonious coexistence of Daoists and Chinese Folk Religion practicers among Confucianism. Similarly with the various Dharmic practices in India that rarely fought amongst each other until Islam came. Similarly with the tolerant Malians who, despite being loosely Islamic, tolerated traditional religions to a greater extent than Europe would until the Enlightenment.
 
And if you want to have a less rampant form of rascism you need to create a stronger Africa and mid east. This way Europe in general will have a harder time colonising (if they can) to the point where Europeans will start to have a "a grudgingly respectful relationship with those two areas. It would also help if you can have Persia fight off the British and the russians. Kind of like the Japanese did to the Russians
Well, I kind of assume that if there is to be an earlier end to racism, it must exist in the first place. No colonialism, no racism.
 
Well, I kind of assume that if there is to be an earlier end to racism, it must exist in the first place. No colonialism, no racism.
As I said a stronger africa and middle east will create a lot of butterflies. I mean there will be colonialism its just that there will be a more respectfull relationship than in OTL. if you read my entire post it wouldn't create a defeat of rascism it would lead to a less rampant form of rascism

Well what created rascism anyways? I mean it didn't begin in the roman empire did it begin during the advent of west african slave trade?
 
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As I said a stronger africa and middle east will create a lot of butterflies. I mean there will be colonialism its just that there will be a more respectfull relationship than in OTL. if you read my entire post it wouldn't create a defeat of rascism it would lead to a less rampant form of rascism

Well what created rascism anyways? I mean it didn't begin in the roman empire did it begin during the advent of west african slave trade?

"Racism" is an extremely loose concept. "Him look different. Him stink! Og throw out of cave" is probably older than caveman stereotypes. All known human societies had a concept of "us" vs "them", and humans seem to be hardwired to trust people who look more like their family or in-group more.

Racism as we know it today - the kind with pseudo-scientific racial classifications, legal ramifications and teaching in school how inferiority is genetic and the poor dumb negro can't help it - is a product of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But there are precursor forms - ideas about how people who look different are somehow fundamentally, evenm organically different - all the way back to at least Greek antiquity (I don't read anything earlier). So what kind of racism are you thinking of? A sufficiently strong cultural POD in the mid-eighteenth century could lead to the idea of biologically distinct human races being regarded as fringe science. But that wouldn't stop people from treating others liker dirt because of their skin colour.
 
"Racism" is an extremely loose concept. "Him look different. Him stink! Og throw out of cave" is probably older than caveman stereotypes. All known human societies had a concept of "us" vs "them", and humans seem to be hardwired to trust people who look more like their family or in-group more.

Racism as we know it today - the kind with pseudo-scientific racial classifications, legal ramifications and teaching in school how inferiority is genetic and the poor dumb negro can't help it - is a product of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But there are precursor forms - ideas about how people who look different are somehow fundamentally, evenm organically different - all the way back to at least Greek antiquity (I don't read anything earlier). So what kind of racism are you thinking of? A sufficiently strong cultural POD in the mid-eighteenth century could lead to the idea of biologically distinct human races being regarded as fringe science. But that wouldn't stop people from treating others liker dirt because of their skin colour.


I know that modern day rascism is based on supremascism (dating back from the romans and greeks and other people).

I'm wondering how a signifigantly less technological gap between europe and the whole world would affect on how they perceive race inferiority.
 
"Racism" is an extremely loose concept. "Him look different. Him stink! Og throw out of cave" is probably older than caveman stereotypes. All known human societies had a concept of "us" vs "them", and humans seem to be hardwired to trust people who look more like their family or in-group more.
r.

Quite. Most peoples' names for themselves translate as "the people" or "the true people", with the implicaation that everyone else wasnt fully human.
 
Open, harder racism is maybe dying in parts.. but rising in others.

And the re is the problem of a more insidious racism surviving.. insitutional, discrete in hearts, etc... The Privilege theory, by example. And the fact there is MANY, MANY blacks in jails of USA, by example, show.. something.

Racism even then would take time, it may morph into this insidous shape, and reapear... like anew target.

Like how the FN and other far-rigthers in Europe now target muslims groups instead of jews specially, quite...
 
The first multicelled organism to climb out of the water dies. No evolution. No dinosuars. No mammals. No Apes. No Humans. No Racism.
 
Well even if you had racism condemmed as wrong early on the enourmessly profit that it caused and the use it is for goverments wanting to invade somewhere makes me think that it would be repaced by prejudgesses very similar. So they were born evil and so must be destroyed might be replaced with their culture has made them evil (it would have the bonus of being in some cases indeed one could argue in all cases true) and so must be destroyed. I think that many supporters of slavery said just that in otl.
 
A different discovery of America may help, especially if delayed and done by someone that is not Spain. While the overall pattern of conquest and exploitation is likely to be similar to OTL, the Spaniards had their own "limpieza de sangre" thing, brought as a legacy of Iberian Reconquista. This was not racism in the modern, pseudo-scientific sense, but helped in laying its foundations.
Also, a different Reformation, especially in England, can be more open to universalistic ideas and less likely to help producing a lot of "chosen people" discourses.
However, actual scientific racism came later. More effective Black and/or Asian polities and a less prejudiced scholarly attitude would be the key factor in having it weaker.
A more succesful Haitian Revolution and aftermath could have some relevance.
For later PODs, I can imagine that more Isandhlawanas and Aduas are going to teach something.
 
A different discovery of America may help, especially if delayed and done by someone that is not Spain. While the overall pattern of conquest and exploitation is likely to be similar to OTL, the Spaniards had their own "limpieza de sangre" thing, brought as a legacy of Iberian Reconquista. This was not racism in the modern, pseudo-scientific sense, but helped in laying its foundations.

And yet it was in Latin America, not the USA, where money whitens.
 
If you want enlightened imperialism, have the french revolution succeed and in full on conquer mode with goodies like Cult of Reason and some really progressive/lunatic people in charge. One of them develops a theory resembling "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond.
Now instead of the The White Man's Burden, you get something like the The Thinking Man's Burden. Unleash a crusade against all those inferior cultures and their stupid reactionary ideas like racism and you end racism fairly early.
 
And yet it was in Latin America, not the USA, where money whitens.

Agreed: as I said elsewhere in the forum, Iberian (and French) "proto-racism" worked on a gray scale. There was a race hierarchy, but NOT an on/off system nor anything resembling the USA's "one drop rule".
My impression is that being a Catholic in Spanish colonies was far more important than being a White; and the clergy was a way to social ascension almost irrespective of race and/or lineage, at least in principle.
Protestant countries, in my understanding, tended to be more rigid in this issue. "Limpieza de sangre" had much to do with subsequent racism, but was not basically about race, it was about lineage, in which race was an aspect but not the only concern.
 
If you want enlightened imperialism, have the french revolution succeed and in full on conquer mode with goodies like Cult of Reason and some really progressive/lunatic people in charge. One of them develops a theory resembling "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond.
Now instead of the The White Man's Burden, you get something like the The Thinking Man's Burden. Unleash a crusade against all those inferior cultures and their stupid reactionary ideas like racism and you end racism fairly early.

That would make Pol Pot and Stalin look like benevolent moderates.
 
Trading racism for proto-communism? That would make for an interesting (if, in parts, unsettling) TL. After all, if there's one thing that can be said for Soviet Communism, it was effectively multi-ethnic...

I was referring to them as to ideological mass-murderers (especially Pol-Pot) not particularly as communists. Any other mobilizing modern (in the sociological sense) ideology would work as well, in this case it was supposed something akin to Jacobinism.
 
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