What I Learned About The Invention Of Race

(This article was originally published on www.bassam.com)

INTRO

If you’re like me and call yourself white, recently you’ve been listening to and educating yourself on systemic racism and what it means to be an anti-racist. You might have posted a black square on Instagram, you might be reading books on social justice, you might be donating to Black causes for the first time, you might be marching, or you might be fighting your part of the battle of equality one conversation at a time.

Awesome. Keep going.

In my quest to understand, I wanted to also lean into one of my interests: language.

If you’ve followed me for any amount of time, you know I talk a lot about how words and concepts have been shaped to impact how we think (consciously or unconsciously), whether it’s: optimism, accountability, caring, meaning, authenticity or grit.

So I started researching the origins of the word “race,” and specifically asked myself how and why it came to be that there were ships full of enslaved African people coming to the Americas in the first place? Were they enslaved because they were Black? Or were they Black because they were enslaved?

For the past couple of weeks I’ve followed the rabbit hole back through Imperialism…