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this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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Lemmygrad is wrong about a lot of things, but they're not wrong about this. It's important to learn from the past so it does not keep repeating.
The concept of the "white race" was developed in the 17th century with the Atlantic slave trade. It is indeed a product of British colonization. The concept literally didn't exist before this. Before the 17th century, people who we would now think of as white identified mainly by nationality and religion.
The concept of whiteness as being a distinct and unifying factor among people from a variety of countries led to the field of scientific racism, which went on for around 2 centuries. This is where terms like "Caucasian" came from. Scientific racism was used as a reason by the Nazis to murder millions of Jews. Now in the 21st century, we know it is pseudoscience even though its terminology lingers.
This doesn't mean that people were blind to skin color before 17th century colonialism, as you pointed out with the Indian caste system that dates back as far as 3300BC. You can see in ancient Egyptian art a wide array of colored skin as well. From Egyptian literature, there aren't signs they really obsessed over it the way society does now.
I think we can all agree that things didn't go too well for non-white people after the invention of whiteness. The concept was founded in oppression and helps perpetuate oppression.