Religion: The Roots of Today's Racism?

LUCIENNE BACON ('22)

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In the 1500s, centuries before the coining of the word “racism,” the term race was used to describe certain kinships or groups of people. Its denotation of physical characteristics is attributed to societal development in the latter part of the seventeenth century. There is an established notion that categorization among groups was prevalent in ancient societies—including those of Rome, Greece, and Egypt—before the establishment of the words that would describe this behavior. Existence of these terms is evidence that social division was not new to the world come the Enlightenment and the period of colonization. However, it was this time in history that brought together behavior and ideas about biological inferiority in such a way that a long-lasting justification for slavery and inequality was formed. What must be investigated further is what made society porous to racial policy capable of inciting results that threaten the very definition of our Constitution today. With that question in mind, one must look at the development of the modern world to understand that religion stood at the forefront of human perspective.