Rod Liddle has questioned whether Ms Jolly, chief librarian of the British Library, was right to say that whites invented racism, and cites the Ancient Greeks and Romans as racists. But he does not define what he means by the term.
If, as Mr Liddle suggests, a racist is someone who loves fighting other people, then racism has indeed been universal throughout human history. But fighting does not necessarily have anything to do with race. So what distinguished races for Greeks and Romans? Environmental determinism is the key. For example, working from medical beliefs about ‘humours’, Greeks thought Germans living in the north were cold, and therefore courageous but thick; Ethiopians in the south, hot and intelligent but cowardly. One Greek doctor observed that the characteristics inherent in living in Asia applied equally to ‘immigrants’, a crucial observation: live in that climate and culture, and you will become that sort of person; live in a different one, and you will become a different sort.
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