2.3 How did ideas of ‘race’ operate in political, legal and economic terms?

Systems of exploitation pre-existed the development of chattel slavery and the European empires. But modern ideas of race developed for the most part as a convenient tool to explain and justify systems of exploitation of people who did not live in Europe, especially people of African origin, where such exploitation was hugely beneficial economically to wealthy European elites. For example, historians have drawn clear links between wealth generated through slavery and the growth of capitalism during the British industrial revolution [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .

In Britain, Europe and the United States, elites tended to connect their ‘whiteness’ with national, personal, moral and economic supremacy. ‘Blackness’ or ‘brownness’ became synonymous with wholescale inferiority, inability to thrive economically, and being unfit for political autonomy and other types of independent agency. It is important to remember that the term ‘white’ also developed a specific kind of meaning in politics and society: ‘white’ didn’t really describe skin colour, but became associated with a particular kind of political and social power. In the US state of Virginia, for example, the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 defined race according to ‘blood’. This highly discriminatory law defined white as anyone ‘who has no trace whatsoever [not one drop] of any blood other than Caucasian’. This racist view was controversial at the time; it indicated an official position that race could not be determined by physical skin colour, but would be defined by state officials intent on preserving established systems of power based on white supremacy.