Historical race concepts: Difference between revisions

{{blockquote|"America became white&nbsp;— the people who, as they claim, 'settled' the country became white&nbsp;— because of the necessity of denying the Black presence, and justifying the Black subjugation. No community can be based on such a principle&nbsp;— or, in other words, no community can be established on so genocidal a lie. White men from Norway, for example, where they were Norwegians&nbsp;— became white: by slaughtering the cattle, poisoning the well, torching the houses, massacring Native Americans, raping Black women.... Because they are white, they cannot allow themselves to be tormented by the suspicion that all men are brothers."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Baldwin |first1=James |author-link1=James Baldwin |title=On Being White... And Other Lies |url=http://www.cwsworkshop.org/pdfs/CARC/Family_Herstories/2_On_Being_White.PDF |access-date=14 February 2019 |work=[[Essence (magazine)|Essence]] |date=April 1984}}</ref>}}

 

The impossibility of drawing clearly defined boundaries between the areas of the supposed racial groups had been observed by Blumenbach<ref>{{cite book |author=Johann Friedrich Blumenbach|title=Handbuch der Naturgeschichte|page=62|year=1797|quote=die Neger, die sich dann in die Habessinier, Mauren ꝛc. verlieren, so wie jede andre Menschen-Varietät mit ihren benachbarten Völkerschaften gleichsam zusammen fließt.|trans-quote=the negroes, who then lose their characteristics into the Abyssinians, the Moors etc., the same way in which every other variety of man flows together with the neighbouring ethnic groups, so to speak|url=http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/view/blumenbach_naturgeschichte_1797?p=84|access-date=2020-06-06}}</ref> and later by [[Charles Darwin]].<ref>"It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant... they graduate into each other, and.. it is hardly possible to discover clear distinctive characters between them... As it is improbable that the numerous and unimportant points of resemblance between the several races of man in bodily structure and mental faculties (I do not here refer to similar customs) should all have been independently acquired, they must have been inherited from progenitors who had these same characters.", Charles Darwin, [http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F937.1&viewtype=text&pageseq=238 ''The Descent of Man'' p. 225 onwards]</ref>