The N-word at the time of Huck Finn

[Joel S. Berson]

At 3/12/2009 03:01 PM, ronbutters at AOL.COM wrote:
>What I said was "the modern idea of racism had not been invented
>yet." Obviously, hatred of The Other has been around forever and
>theorized in various ways. Arnold's data supports my observation.

That "racism" was perhaps not in the English language until the 1930s
has no significance for whether the racist notions of scientific
racism existed in the 1880s or 1839 -- The sentiment that blacks were
inherently inferior did exist then.  And I have no idea how "the
modern idea of racism" might differ from the early modern idea.

Joel

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