Racism is a form of social belief that groups of human will inherit their ancestral attributes and one race can be superior to the others. Race, however, is not a science but merely a social construct.
Historical Development
Racism today is heavily influenced by the ancient society where slaves were common. #slavery in Europe, North Africa and Arabic Peninsula was prominent and was often justified by religion differences (Christian and Islam).
During Islamic Golden Age, African slaves (or Black slaves, as most of them have dark skins) were pretty common and well known among Muslims. They developed a belief that Black slaves were inferior to other people even to the other slaves like Christians in terms of intelligence. However, most Islamic scholars and officials invalidated such belief, and reinstated that enslavement could be justified only during jihad.
Although unaccepted by the scholars, this belief was quite popular at the time and then spread to the Iberian Peninsula, which at the time was still under the Muslims’ control. The Iberian Christian feudal regimes, Spain and Portugal, started implementing much stricter religious control, targeted at Muslim and Jews, after expelling Muslim regimes during Reconquista. They too, inherited the popular belief that Black slaves were inferior where later such logic was applied to Jews and Muslim.
During the colonisation of the America continent, Spain developed a caste system which ranked races, Spaniard, Mestizo (mixes), Indian (America) and Black in a hierarchy.
The Rise of White Supremacism
England joined the adventure to the America in 17th century, but they quickly faced issues in their colonies especially in Jamaica. Like in Spanish and Portuguese colonies, they use Black slaves extensively. Additionally, they implemented servant system in order to deal with the Irish rebels. Those servants do not necessary treated badly and quite often they will be set free after the end of the contract.
Even though they have some differences in their identities, Irish servants and Black slaves often work together to rebel the repressive colonial rule by the English. The English officials then start to segregate servants and slaves to quell the rebellions. They categorised them into two groups: “Christian” and “Negro”. Overtime, the label “Christian” becomes more vague and eventually the label “White” replace its function.