The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #123640 Message #2724915
Posted By: Goose Gander
16-Sep-09 - 02:51 PM
Thread Name: BS: Resolving the Clash of Civilizations
Subject: RE: BS: Resolving the Clash of Civlizations
"Well let's not forget the crusades and conquistadors. From end of Dark Ages through The Enlightment, Christians had mercenary reasons for colonizing and enslaving non christians. Black, yellow or red skin was a convenient way to justify doing this. By attaching the concept of evil to dark skin, they eased the way to usurping the land of and exploiting people in the name of god."
My statement about "Early Christianity" still stands. I thought it was a fairly obvious point, unless you believe Christianity dropped from the sky sometime in the late Middle Ages (by the way, you're not going to find many serious historians who use the term 'Dark Ages'). Anyway (and obviously, too), plenty of other people besides 'white Christians' have plundered, murdered and enslaved in the name of gods, God or Mammon, and this inevitably leads to the delineation of an 'uncivilized' Other against which 'civilization' is juxtaposed. In the case of European expansion, this process was racialized in white/dark dichotomy; in different situations it evolves in different ways (caste system in India; etc).
"After the church and later government sanctioned exploitation ended, the mind set of white christians was already set and has been passed along to this day."
Define what the hell you mean by "white Christians" - do you include the many who fought against Jim Crow in the evil old days of segregation? Do you include liberal Catholics who worked in solidarity with the poor in Central America during the 1980's (some of whom lost their lives)? If you made a similar blanket statement about ANY other group of people ('Muslims do this', 'Hispanics do that', etc.) you would be called out as a bigot, and rightly so. But I suppose everyone needs a scapegoat.