[warmblood]

The inclination to take from people of color at the cost of their own existence and then offer little, if anything, in return is the parallel. This has changed little 250 years later in European and American societies because just as before, people of color have to fight to justify their equal worth and right to exist. It's a partial takeaway from the OP.

[noobermin]

A valid point, but the post were replying to is making the mistake of simply lumping together groups of people due to their race (and across times, which makes it worse) which is a particular form of hatred known as racism. This is the same hatred Blacks face which is arguably the ultimate cause of the injustice they faced in the 1700s and today. More racism isn't going to help alleviate this issue.

EDIT: I want to emphasize that I really think that persistent racial injustices is a worthy topic, even though I just said it's a "valid point". Also, eevilspock is, I think, making a good point about the current injustices against blacks in America in a comment further down in the thread. He also distinguishing in that comment that it isn't whites as a race but that it is their culture and their place of power over blacks in history...and that in some alternate history, it's possible roles can be reversed. A first reading of his post seems like he is lumping all whites into a bin which is racism in my view, but after reading his second comment, I can see he might have not meant to come across in that way.

[smadge]

Racism was invented to provide an ideological justification for the African slave trade and colonialism. The institutional racism faced by African Americans today has direct and traceable roots to the African slave trade of the 1700s. It's not racist, and certainly not hateful to make this connection.

[ams6110]

Pretty sure racism predates colonialism and the slave trade of the era. Slavery and racism dates to antiquity at least, and probably back to prehistoric tribal days.

[smadge]

This is actually a pretty well researched and established thesis. Whether you accept it or not is up to you. Take this quote from a mainstream American publication, the Atlantic:

"there is nothing particularly "natural" about viewing people with darker skin and curlier hair as inferior. Drake surveys all perceptions of people with darker skin, curlier hair, or both across history. He finds very little consistency and concludes that racism, as we know it, is basically a product of the slave trade, which is to say the seizure of power." [1]

This isn't saying that racism didn't exist before the European enslavement of Africans. It's saying that the racism that exists today, and the concept of racism is linked to slavery, and is very different from racism that occurred in different eras, cultures, and regions of the world. You could say racism has been invented many times by different people, for different reasons.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/the-case...

[ebola1717]

I can't speak for the original commenter, but I can't agree with the the idea that we can make racism go away by pretending race doesn't exist (as in, not acknowledging and correcting for the huge historical and ongoing impact it has on groups of people). In fact, I would argue that in lots of liberal cities today (SF, NYC), almost no one hates blacks. But economic inequality is still rampant, precisely because we're not doing enough to acknowledge and correct centuries of injustice.

[Retra]

Centuries of injustice have probably never been corrected in all of human history.

[habitue]

> This has changed little 250 years later

Surely it's changed more than a little. I think it's possible to say there's still work to do without having to claim that race relations remain essentially unchanged from the 1700's.

[Lawtonfogle]

>The inclination to take from people of color at the cost of their own existence and then offer little, if anything, in return is the parallel.

It is the inclination of the average (wo)man to take from all those who are at a disadvantage and offer little, if anything, in return. Race was just one metric used to justify and control this behavior, but it is not inherent to it.