Game of Thrones

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by cocksure

i should probably stop making these posts but how much do you know about "racism" and attitudes towards women etc. in the middle ages

although your point can still stand if you replace the influence of the actual european middle ages with the post-enlightenment image of the middle ages. that is certainly tainted with a lot of unpleasant phenomena that found their way into the fantasy genre

if you want to argue that society in the middle ages was not racist or sexist, please be my guest, I am very interested

Originally Posted by scottytheoneand

"welcome to postmodernism"

redbreegull took an art class

ok whatever that means

[cocksure]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

if you want to argue that society in the middle ages was not racist or sexist, please be my guest, I am very interested

it was certainly sexist from a modern point of view, but perhaps less sexist than many early modern societies. these are bold generalisations obviously.

i've talked enough about racism in history on this board. yes, many people in the middle ages were xenophobic. but there was no theory on human races or much value attached to similar ideas. at least in theory, religion greatly overshadowed any other distinction between people (but even that didn't mean that exchange between religions didn't take place)

[redbreegull]

It's true that the modern concept of strictly divided racial categories was the product of the Enlightenment

However, just like we look back from our modern perspective and see sexism in medieval Europe, I think the racism there is obvious too.

I mean, in present day US I feel like there aren't really that many people who actually believe there are biological dividing lines between "colored peoples" and whites which make whites smarter or superior (unless you are nimrod's son). However, there are tons of people who think that non-whites are inferior because of cultural differences. This isn't exactly the same thing as believing people of African descent are scientifically bound to be stupid and violent because of genetic predisposition, but we still definitely say it is racism.

[Trotskilicious]

you know cocksure i buy everything you wrote but i still don't see how using the term genocide to describe the actions of the united states against native americans, who they viewed as savages and lusted for their land, is incorrect.

[redbreegull]

well it wasn't calculated from a war room the way the Holocaust was, but I think when you look at the engineers of American Indian policy in the US, there is enough there in terms of primary sources to prove there was a consensus of intention to drive all natives off the face of the continent

[Trotskilicious]

so calculating it in a tent is different how

i mean if you want to say that the nazis had pioneering data management systems courtesy of IBM to fully tabulate and remove an entire urban population from the cities and the americans just shot the native people on the frontier is different, yeah, but there was planning at both stages. The difference between that and genocide because we apply the term to the Serbian Wars and Saddam's war against the Kurds, both didn't involve the particular data gathering that the nazis undertook. What they did was pretty much unprecedented.

[Trotskilicious]

there was, however, forcible removal to internment camps in both cases

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

so calculating it in a tent is different how

i mean if you want to say that the nazis had pioneering data management systems courtesy of IBM to fully tabulate and remove an entire urban population from the cities and the americans just shot the native people on the frontier is different, yeah, but there was planning at both stages. The difference between that and genocide because we apply the term to the Serbian Wars and Saddam's war against the Kurds, both didn't involve the particular data gathering that the nazis undertook. What they did was pretty much unprecedented.

yeah I was agreeing with you

[Trotskilicious]

and i was disagreeing that "planning" is even noteworthy

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

and i was disagreeing that "planning" is even noteworthy

that's because you will argue with anything.

[cocksure]

@trotski: i was under the impression that (in that other thread) we were talking about events that took place right after europeans and native americans came into contact

i don't know enough about the events surrounding the "removal" of indians in the US but that seems certainly closer to actual genocide, i totally agree with you there.

and planning is noteworthy because intentions are noteworthy. if i accidentally run over the last of the mohicans with my car i don't think i'm guilty of genocide. if i systematically kill every jew in my country and every country i invade however...

[cocksure]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

However, just like we look back from our modern perspective and see sexism in medieval Europe, I think the racism there is obvious too.

I mean, in present day US I feel like there aren't really that many people who actually believe there are biological dividing lines between "colored peoples" and whites which make whites smarter or superior (unless you are nimrod's son). However, there are tons of people who think that non-whites are inferior because of cultural differences. This isn't exactly the same thing as believing people of African descent are scientifically bound to be stupid and violent because of genetic predisposition, but we still definitely say it is racism.

i get ya, but first of all i think that usage of the word racism is a little too unclear for "scientific" purposes. and secondly, it is simply not true that you will find many medieval documents talking about how "blacks" are dumb and "asians" are filthy or whatever. clearly, some black africans and many many people from the middle east were venerated as saints for example. by the end of the middle ages you get some early forms of nationalism though (but just read the marseillaise or something to see how much more intense this got in "modern" times) and there was a lot of hatred towards jewish, left-handed or red-haired people - you name it. always depends on who's talking about whom

[cocksure]

if you're really interested, this is probably the closest you get to a somewhat "racist" text in the (late) middle ages: http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/525/1...hos_502328.pdf

at least that's the best example that i know of

[Trotskilicious]

Originally Posted by cocksure

@trotski: i was under the impression that (in that other thread) we were talking about events that took place right after europeans and native americans came into contact

Oh, I see. However, I would point out that some of it was accidental (plagues) and some of it was most certainly genocide (Pizzaro).

i don't know enough about the events surrounding the "removal" of indians in the US but that seems certainly closer to actual genocide, i totally agree with you there.

If you're ever interested, the stories of the Cherokee and the Sioux are probably your best start.