Racism

The concept of race is a modern concept. In the ancient world, the Greeks, Romans, Jews, Christians, and Muslims did not have racial categories.  Rather people were divided according to religion, class, language, etc.

Aristotle’s famous division between Greek and Barbarian was not based on race, but on those who organized themselves into community city-states and those who did not. The ancient Romans categorized people not on biological race or skin color, but on differing legal structures upon which they organized their lives

Samuel George Morton (1799-1851) tried to prove in the 19th century that select “races” were superior to others by measuring the cranial capacity (brain size) of different groups (“whites,” “American Indians,” “blacks”). He also argued that there were different origins and lineages for different races (polygenism), rather than a single creation (monogenism) as found in the Bible

Thomas Jefferson was not only a political philosopher but also a naturalist. In one of his notes, he argued that black people were predisposed to sleeping more because their minds were empty: “An animal whose body is at rest and who does not reflect must be disposed to sleep, of course.”