[olliej]

You’re aware that race doesn’t mean “white” vs “black” right?

While obviously these systems were used to justify treating non-white races as being fundamentally inferior, it was also used against other groups (“proving” that the Irish and scots were predisposed to drunkenness, etc).

The idea of racism being purely a skin color concept is relatively recent. Look at the historic treatment of the Irish, welsh, and Scottish in Britain over the last few millennia - or Italians up until the the mid to early 1900s. The treatment of people from Eastern Europe, the polish, today.

All of these races can be distinguished genetically - or even through external features.

Similar discrimination occurs other countries among people with the same skin colour- I’m sure countries like China and Japan could point to “objective” measures like genetics that can be not related to negative aspects of groups they discriminate against.