[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...