@hibernicus and @Johanna thank you! That’s the sort of info I was looking for.
I am really asking about the words used to describe skin color, and how they became widely used. As we in America and I assume most of Europe think of the color “black” as a very different color than the skin of most African people. The same goes for white and European people. Interesting that other cultures use (used?) different colors!
Not that I can tell. According to Stamped from the Beginning: the Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi, Black chattel slavery was begun by Prince Henry of Portugal, and the racist “justification” for same was produced right away in 1453 by Prince Henry’s chronicler Gomes Eanes de Zurara. The two have always gone together.
I assumed this because the other possibility made no sense either. Slavery wasn’t preceded by two centuries of mistreating Indians, Americans nor Asians. Slavery didn’t spring into being at Jamestown. Spain had already been doing it from the very beginning of colonization.
Apart from that, the rest of my post is transferrable to Native Americans as much as Indians. It’s true that they were seen as many by heathens, by otherizing, but my point is that race isn’t just a product of otherizing, it’s the creation of specific categories simply to justify and codify the roles of slave and slaver. And to that end I’d point out that American Indians were imputed a great deal more nobility and respectability than Black people were.
Which came centuries after the establishment of transatlantic slavery. As for the codification of race itself, it had already been underway for a half century before the essay you mentioned in 1684.
I will say that Europe wholeheartedly embraced racism, because the colonies after all were their source of income. But the idea of racism as we know it didn’t come from Europe, nor did it originate from scientific racism. Those came later. The theory of racism as we understand it was wholly a product of chattel slavery.
Gemini answer:
”The terms “black people” and “white people” as racial identifiers are modern social constructs that emerged during the Age of Exploration and were solidified during the European Enlightenment, primarily to justify the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism.
Historical Origins of the Terms
Early Modern Period: The development of a racial hierarchy coincided with the rise of a system of racialized slavery in the 17th century.
“White” people: The term “white” first appeared as a racial classification in the English playwright Thomas Middleton’s 1613 play The Triumphs of Truth. In the American colonies, the term “white” was formalized in laws in the late 17th century to distinguish people of European descent from enslaved Africans and Native Americans, granting the former specific rights and privileges. Previously, colonists typically identified as English, Irish, etc..
“Black” people: The term “black” was used to describe people of sub-Saharan African descent, building on pre-existing English words for the color black, which had moral connotations of evil, impurity, or sin. This negative association was used to demonize African people and justify their enslavement. In the 1960s, during the Civil Rights Movement, the term “Black” was reclaimed as a chosen identity rooted in self-determination and pride (e.g., “Black Power,” “Black is Beautiful”).
Scientific Classification: In the 18th century, European scientists and philosophers, such as Carl Linnaeus and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, formalized these color-based categories into pseudo-scientific racial classification systems. Blumenbach created five categories: the “Caucasian or White,” “Mongolian or Yellow,” “Aethiopian or Black,” “American or Red,” and “Malayan or Brown” races. These classifications, though now scientifically discredited, were influential in popularizing the color terminology and supporting racist ideologies”.
Then I totally misunderstood what you were asking in the OP, since those were highly site-specific answers.
Nor do the answers from me or others about black chattel slavery answer your question.
The answer to your “global scale” question is in @justdoit’s post. The rest is interesting discussion but not right for FQ.
I once saw a production of The Merchant of Venice done with an all-white five-person cast. That character was played by one of the male actors wearing glasses and a sombrero.
I believe there was a whole discussion here once on the history of colour. Orange-haired pople are called “red-heads” because orange was thought of as a shade of red. Homer refers to the “wine-dark sea” as a way of describing the colour of the sea. And so on.
I suspect the distinction made by the Europeans was the level of civilization they encountered. In Shakespeare, Moors are not denigrated as less than human, they had approximately the same level of civilization - commerce, construction, technology, writing, empires, shipping, etc. (And had conquered Spain, while Arab invaders made it to the gates of Vienna) Whereas the original inhabitants of the Americas and sub-sahara Africa did not seem to be so technologically “civilized” and because without prior contact their customs and language were unfamiliar. They were less inclined (at first) to put down the inhabitants of India or China because their level of civilization was to coplex to ignore - at least until the beginnings of the industrial revolution gave the excuse to “demonstrate European superiority”.
There’s a long history in Hollywood of casting well-known Caucasian actors in various ethnic roles - the classic was John Wayne as Genghis Khan. Also, Anthony Quinn as everything from Greek or Arab to Mexican and native American. Plays like Othello were typically played in blackface due to lack of talented black actors allowed on stage before the civil rights era. That makeup is highly problematic today.
More recently, the trend seems to be a caucasian lead in an Asian movie, i.e. The Great Wall or The Last Samurai.
Another example:
Yul Brynner was an ethnic Russian with a smidgen of Mongol ancestry, but became famous in the 1950s & '60s playing the King of Siam = modern Thailand. At 5’8" he was merely average by contemporary Caucasian standards, but was pretty darn tall by Thai standards.
At least Brynner could say he was born in Asia.
Anthony Quinn was Mexican. Quite famously, in fact, at least when I was kid. I knew he was a famous actor, Mexican, and knew no more than that.
Muslim invaders, led by Turks.
In the first few years of elementary school I was taught that you only needed four crayons to color the faces of people in your coloring books – pink, black, yellow, and red. I had seen African Americans in person before but that was about it. The television was in black and white. It was only later that I learned that this color scheme was not accurate.
As @Johanna points out, it is ancient. Cf. Catullus’s Carmen 93: “Nil nimium studeo, Caesar, tibi velle placere, / nec scire utrum sis albus an ater homo.”
but the difference is that he is not questioning Caesar’s American-style “ethnicity”
In Sudan, to recap:
White = “red”
Light brown = '“white”
Dark brown = “green”
Nilotic peoples = “blue”
“Black” is not used for people because it’s considered disrespectful (implying enslaved status). Ironically, the name Sudan quite literally means ‘Black peoples’. Black Americans are generally “green.” When Sudanese people come to America and find light brown and dark brown people are lumped together as “Black,” it must be some culture shock.
In Persian, love poems are written to dark-skinned lovers, who are called “green.” In Persian, “green” is also the color of the sky. Go figure.
I wonder how they react when people say “I don’t care if you’re black, white, purple, or green.”
as an aside, Read Bruce Baum “the rise and fall of the Caucasian race” to track who was considered “white”–Italians, Jewish, Middle Eastern, et al–over time
One of the saddest scenes in my life was when I was going around interviewing people for the US Census. Since I can speak Arabic, I was assigned to interview a lot of Sudanese and Egyptian folks in the area. So one Sudanese mom invited me in to sit at her kitchen table to talk in Arabic while her 8-year-old son looked on. When I asked the race question, she answered “Aswad” ‘Black’.* The kid jumped up, yelling “No! Mommy! Don’t tell her we’re Black! We’re White! We’re White!” It broke my heart. Later, I thought of a whole speech to make in Arabic about Black pride, but at the time I didn’t say anything. The old “staircase wit” (esprit de l’escalier) strikes again.
*She adjusted her answer to the way she is seen in America. She was of course aware that the Sudanese view of color is unknown here. Her son was probably motivated by the Census Bureau’s determination that Arabs are “White,” and Sudanese people definitely count as Arabs. The complication is that Arab identity has no color line. If your father was Arab, you’re Arab, that’s all there is to it; could be anywhere along the entire range from Afro Black to Euro white.
As Rashida Tlaib indignantly demanded of the Census chief, “Do I look White to you?!”
I went on a conquistador spree a while back and read lots of (translated) first person accounts. They justified enslaving the people the found by “they lost the war”. Race didn’t seem to be a part of it. If a city cooperated with the spanish then leave the power structures in place, but if they fight then defeat them, enslave them, brand them on the face and complain that Cortes keeps all the pretty women for himself.
In late middle/early modern English “black” would mean something like the modern term “Black Irish,” - someone with a relatively dark complexion. “Brown” would be someone who is suntanned. “White” might mean very pale, and blond, or gray/white haired. “Reed” or “Ruddy” more reddish or ginger. Surnames such as White, Brown, Black, and Reed reflect these older labels.
There’s some debate about this - he may just as well have been talking about its turbulence. The translation of οἶνοψ favoured there is “wine-eyed sea” i.e. drunken, stormy, wild.