origins of racism

in the way that they both mention how whites fear similarities with people of color, guilt of oppressing, and fear of retaliation. In the article Oppression, Marilyn Frye states how displacement and projection are used in real life. She mentions how minorities are perceived by the majority, and how those perceptions affect the way people of color are treated by whites. Loewenbergs argument is very attractive. I think it carries a lot of weight. It only takes common sense to see that people give undesirable characteristics and actions to others. People dont like to be in relation with something negative. The article clearly illustrates how people only want positive characteristics attributed to them. The third and final argument was made by James Boggs in the article, Uprooting Racism and Racists in the United States. Boggs doesnt use a psychological and/ or sociological explanations to discover the origins of racism. He states that racism is the result of historical and cultural forces that have provided racism with an easy mode of travel through the years. He mentions that systematic racism didnt exist before the rise of capitalism. Slave oppression had always existed in earlier times, but this was usually on the basis of military conquest and the conquerors did not develop a theory of racial superiority to rationalize their right to exploit their slaves (Boggs 138). He also contends that the slave trade brought about feelings of superiority and inferiority. It assigned people roles which would shape the way in which people of color were viewed for many years to follow. Boggs wrote that African culture was erased during the slave trade era. Whites told themselves that blacks had no culture to begin with so they werent doing anything wrong. They tell themselves that in order to cancel the guilt they feel from holding people captive against their will. The more instrumental the s...