Where People Of Color Are Born to Be Demonized
Where does the Othering of racial minorities start, in history? Would that be the objectification that took place during 16th century colonialism and enslavement of Native Americans and then Africans? Or was it something prior to all of this?
In an exegesis paper on Mark 3:20-30, a paper on Belzeebub and Christus Victor, I mentioned that in high school, our Honors U.S. history teacher informed us that the Puritans used to understand the devil as a black man, and she showed us paintings to. My professor said she needed to see a source for that, and I understand why.
But this imagery did not come out of anywhere. In fact, David Theo Goldberg, in his Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meanings did a genealogy of race, starting with figures such as the first century A.D. artist, Pliny the Elder. Pliny depicted men from Libya literally having their heads on top of their chests, Amyctyrae who had lips large enough they could use them as umbrellas, as well as other monstrosities. More importantly, Pliny associated certain physical attributes to human beings who lived in specific regions; in short, he categorized them based on physiology and race (22-23) The Plinian catalogue was used throughout the Middle Ages; these savage monsters were listed according to a hierarchy,and by 1510, along with Aristotle’s doctrine of natural slavery in his Politics, the Spanish colonizers had found their justification in using the First Nations people as forced labor.
Speak of the devil, and a group of high schoolers wondered why I would not let them play King Kong on a DVD player.
