The Western-Centric, Racist Myopia Among the Regressive Left

[Kooky]

"Fetishizing white women as a fantasm" is racist in addition to being sexist, as is being obsequious toward someone based on their skin color (which I'm not sure was the reason for the obsequiousness in your case; I suspect it might have just been a way to coax money out of you, probably by selling you stuff or getting a tip, since I've seen that myself).

I don't disagree with the rest of your points, and I do think the sexism compounded the racism, and vice versa. Acknowledging the complexity doesn't erase either factor.

And it is prominent among White people, too - or have you never wondered why the spokeswomen of xenophobic and racist movements often tend to be, by default, White blue-eyed blondes?

 

[Augustus]

Harems" are separate parts of buildings to house a man's wives and female servants. Are you perhaps referring to the orientalist stereotype that was primarily promoted by European imperialist adventurers, artists and literati in the 19th century to titillate their European and American audiences?

No, from the time of the Vikings interactions with the Arab World via Barbary Corsairs via Ottoman Imperialism etc. attractive white women have been seen as a premium commodity and fetishised in the same way 'orientalist tropes' fetishised 'exotic Eastern women'.

For example: Circassian beauties - Wikipedia

The overwhelming majority of the Arab slave trade was conducted with Africa and Africans. Europeans were not a common commodity among slavers after the Russian Empire came into control of the territory of the Golden Horde and the Crimean Tartars, who were the primary movers in the Black Seas slave trade (which, by the way, was mainly run by Italian merchants, not Arabs).

Both male and female Europeans very much were a common commodity among slavers after that point even though not the majority ethnic grouping.

See for example:

Barbary pirates - Wikipedia

Slavery in the Ottoman Empire - Wikipedia

 

[Kooky]

No, from the time of the Vikings interactions with the Arab World via Barbary Corsairs via Ottoman Imperialism etc. attractive white women have been seen as a premium commodity and fetishised in the same way 'orientalist tropes' fetishised 'exotic Eastern women'.

For example: Circassian beauties - Wikipedia

Oh, attractive pale-skinned women were no doubt thought of as desirable, and many of the most famous Ottoman wives and concubines came from areas in modern day Eastern Europe or the Balkans - much like blonde female slaves had been treated as a highly desirable commodity in the Roman Empire just prior to its conquest.

What I was trying to interrogate was your explicit linking of the slave trade to "harems", which were a common trope of 19th century European art, fiction and nonfiction that played on stereotypes of the "decadent" East and the sexualization of its society and culture, typically featuring scantily-dressed European or Europeanized female characters in distress preyed upon by villainous orientalized stereotypes.

EDIT: I find it strange, however, that you are talking about "white" women when a) that kind of racial thinking would have been anachronistic prior to the 18th century, and particularly anachronistic to the Middle East, b) the dominant elite of the Ottoman Empire came from the Balkans, and c) even the most ardent Islamophobes have been very keen to point out that, by their skin color, most Turks and Arabs would still count as "white" in European or American society.

So, what's up with specifying "white" when you specifically mean Christian Europeans from outside Ottoman controlled territories?

Both male and female Europeans very much were a common commodity among slavers after that point even though not the majority ethnic grouping.

See for example:

Barbary pirates - Wikipedia

Slavery in the Ottoman Empire - Wikipedia

My understanding has been that the Mediterranean slave trade was much smaller in volume than either the Black Seas trade or the Trans-Saharan trade routes. (Of course, all of them were dwarved by the proto-industrial scale of the Transatlantic slave trade, but that's not what we're discussing here.)

 

[Augustus]

Oh, attractive pale-skinned women were no doubt thought of as desirable, and many of the most famous Ottoman wives and concubines came from areas in modern day Eastern Europe or the Balkans - much like blonde female slaves had been treated as a highly desirable commodity in the Roman Empire just prior to its conquest.

So you agree what I said was, in fact, correct?

What I was trying to interrogate was your explicit linking of the slave trade to "harems", which were a common trope of 19th century European art, fiction and nonfiction that played on stereotypes of the "decadent" East and the sexualization of its society and culture, typically featuring scantily-dressed European or Europeanized female characters in distress preyed upon by villainous orientalized stereotypes.

What you seem to be doing is:

a) making a highly pedantic, yet incorrect, quibble about use of the word harem in context. Where do you think many of the women captured and sold as slaves ended up? (also note: either harem as place or as people are correct usages of the term in English).
b) engaging in bad mind-reading to insinuate that, even though you agree what I said was completely factually correct, you presume it was made out of bad-faith or ignorance for some reason

EDIT: I find it strange, however, that you are talking about "white" women when a) that kind of racial thinking would have been anachronistic prior to the 18th century, and particularly anachronistic to the Middle East, b) the dominant elite of the Ottoman Empire came from the Balkans, and c) even the most ardent Islamophobes have been very keen to point out that, by their skin color, most Turks and Arabs would still count as "white" in European or American society.

So, what's up with specifying "white" when you specifically mean Christian Europeans from outside Ottoman controlled territories?

So you are trying to tell me that modern Western notions of race are a product of Western modernity?

Again, an attempt at quibbling that assumes ignorance and bad faith.

Why 'white'? See the post I replied to for the context: that fetishisation of 'white'/light skinned women was a modern cultural invention.

If you find it strange, think about how people communicate in different context and how not all contexts are 'let's engage in a long scholarly discourse about why women prized for their white skin should not be referred to as white even though it adds nothing of substance to the actual point being made'

My understanding has been that the Mediterranean slave trade was much smaller in volume than either the Black Seas trade or the Trans-Saharan trade routes. (Of course, all of them were dwarved by the proto-industrial scale of the Transatlantic slave trade, but that's not what we're discussing here.)

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of slaves is hardly inconsequential ,or churlish to mention, as part of global history.

 

[epronovost]

While what you say has some truth, it is also not entirely accurate.

It goes back over a millennium regarding the harems of Arabs, North Africans, Ottomans, etc. The slave trade was certainly carried out from a place of privilege.

Also another reason is the preference for light coloured skin in many countries which long predates colonialism and was a marker of class.

I personnaly find the mention of sexual preferences from a centuries passed, while entirely correct, Jannissaries and sex slaves were bought from Eastern European stock for a long while, mostly from Crimea and the Balkans, harder to reasonnably etablish then one fed by western hegemony of the 19th to 21st century. The main body of population in Egypt, North Africa and the Ottoman Empire never had acccess to those harems and the product of slave trade and by the 19th century, that trade was pretty much all but dead European powers having surpassed their middle-eastern rivals all the while the Ottoman Empire itself was heading toward a ban on slavery.

The slave trade of white people from the black sea's coast was occuring mostly from the capture of Constantinople to the early 18th century when the Khanate of Crimea was prosperous. Considering the timeframe and the lack of popular ''consumption'' of slavic-born sex-slave, while possible it sparked an interest in europeans as a beauty standards, it would be risky to imply that it's a potential cause for today's behavior. Our sexual preferences and beauty standards aren't the same of those of over 300 years passed. I am not an expert on the history of the region and the era though. I don't know if you are (somehow, I thought your sphere of expertise was the lower medieval period) or if you have good reading suggestion on the subject. It is quite interesting.

 

[Kooky]

So you agree what I said was, in fact, correct?



What you seem to be doing is:

How about responding to the points I made, rather those you believe I secretly made where you can't see them and only can guess at their meaning?

So you are trying to tell me that modern Western notions of race are a product of Western modernity?

Apparently, it's something I have to tell you, because you don't seem to have figured it out by yourself until I pointed it out to you.

Why 'white'? See the post I replied to for the context: that fetishisation of 'white'/light skinned women was a modern cultural invention.

And it is a modern cultural invention. The fetishization of Whiteness can by definition only go back for as far as Whiteness has existed.

Almost nobody except for a tiny fraction of very indoors people from the UK actually have literally white skin though, do they? So why call these women "white" when they don't correspond to the modern racial categoryies of Whiteness, and don't look meaningfully different from the women already living inside the Ottoman Empire since the 16th century?

Tell me, which of these two women would you consider "white" by modern standards:

By the way, I do recommend you read the rest of my posts here in this thread, since you don't seem to have picked up on anything I've written in this discussion besides a minor point buried in a fairly large post of mine.

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of slaves is hardly inconsequential ,or churlish to mention, as part of global history.

To answer pedantry with pedantry, I did not say "inconsequential", I said "much smaller in volume".

 

[Augustus]

I personnaly find the mention of sexual preferences from a centuries passed, while entirely correct, Jannissaries and sex slaves were bought from Eastern European stock for a long while, mostly from Crimea and the Balkans, harder to reasonnably etablish then one fed by western hegemony of the 19th to 21st century. The main body of population in Egypt, North Africa and the Ottoman Empire never had acccess to those harems and the product of slave trade and by the 19th century, that trade was pretty much all but dead European powers having surpassed their middle-eastern rivals all the while the Ottoman Empire itself was heading toward a ban on slavery.

The slave trade of white people from the black sea's coast was occuring mostly from the capture of Constantinople to the early 18th century when the Khanate of Crimea was prosperous. Considering the timeframe and the lack of popular ''consumption'' of slavic-born sex-slave, while possible it sparked an interest in europeans as a beauty standards, it would be risky to imply that it's a potential cause for today's behavior.

Our sexual preferences and beauty standards aren't the same of those of over 300 years passed. I am not an expert on the history of the region and the era though. I don't know if you are (somehow, I thought your sphere of expertise was the lower medieval period) or if you have good reading suggestion on the subject. It is quite interesting.

Elite culture always filters down as it drives literature, arts, etc.

But you will find light coloured skin being associated with beauty in many cultures going back long before colonialism. This is documented in Europe, Asia and Africa.

That this may have been magnified by colonialism, and that modern culture and the perception of Western people as being more promiscuous may also play a role doesn't negate the fact that light skin has long been considered desirable.

For example:

In Indonesia, light skin has been the desirable color for as long as we can document. As this book will make clear, in some of the oldest surviving Indo- nesian literature, such as the epic poem Ramayana, adapted in the late ninth cen- tury from its Indian origin, light-skinned women were the dominant beauty norm of the time... Through a reading of the Old Javanese adaptation of the Indian epic poem Ramayana, chapter one argues that color hierarchy already mattered prior to European colonialism and was articulated through affective vocabularies attached to notions of beauty. The chapter argues that the conflation between lightness and light skin as desirable and darkness and dark skin as undesirable is registered through rasa. That is, in Ramayana, women with light skin color are represented with positive rasa as beautiful and desirable, whereas people with dark skin color are represented with negative rasa as undesirable and often terrifying.

Seeing Beauty, Sensing Race in Transnational Indonesia - A Saraswati

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The overwhelming majority of the Arab slave trade was conducted with Africa and Africans. Europeans were not a common commodity among slavers after the Russian Empire came into control of the territory of the Golden Horde and the Crimean Tartars, who were the primary movers in the Black Seas slave trade (which, by the way, was mainly run by Italian merchants, not Arabs).

Muslims in Africa also drove it, including sailing as far as England and Irish and capturing Europeans and forcing them into slavery. And the practice is many centuries old. Such as, the Ottomans capturing Europeans for slavery being older than the Crusades.
Barbary Pirates and English Slaves

 

[Shadow Wolf]

And it is a modern cultural invention. The fetishization of Whiteness can by definition only go back for as far as Whiteness has existed.

It's not modern. It's old enough that most Ottoman Sultans had Greek mothers.

 

[epronovost]

Elite culture always filters down as it drives literature, arts, etc.

But you will find light coloured skin being associated with beauty in many cultures going back long before colonialism. This is documented in Europe, Asia and Africa.

That this may have been magnified by colonialism, and that modern culture and the perception of Western people as being more promiscuous may also play a role doesn't negate the fact that light skin has long been considered desirable.

For example:

In Indonesia, light skin has been the desirable color for as long as we can document. As this book will make clear, in some of the oldest surviving Indo- nesian literature, such as the epic poem Ramayana, adapted in the late ninth cen- tury from its Indian origin, light-skinned women were the dominant beauty norm of the time... Through a reading of the Old Javanese adaptation of the Indian epic poem Ramayana, chapter one argues that color hierarchy already mattered prior to European colonialism and was articulated through affective vocabularies attached to notions of beauty. The chapter argues that the conflation between lightness and light skin as desirable and darkness and dark skin as undesirable is registered through rasa. That is, in Ramayana, women with light skin color are represented with positive rasa as beautiful and desirable, whereas people with dark skin color are represented with negative rasa as undesirable and often terrifying.

Seeing Beauty, Sensing Race in Transnational Indonesia - A Saraswati

I think you are conflating pale skin with Caucasian/western european traits mostly associated with germanic, greeko-roman, slavic and celtic ethnicity. There is a difference between the two and I would be more prudent that when mentionning that Western women are fetishized by eastern and middle eastern men due to the paleness of their skin due to beauty standards that can find their first expression in Antiquity. While pale skin is definitely a common standard of beauty for women in many cultures in many different era up to today, it doesn't mean it's linked/explains sexist and "pervy" behavior toward western women.

 

[Kooky]

@Augustus
So are we now talking about light skinned people in general (such as e.g. Middle Easterners or South Asians with comparatively lighter skin than their contemporaries from these areas) or Europeans/Westerners specifically?

Because these two are not the same thing and don't have the same history.

 

[Augustus]

I think you are conflating pale skin with Caucasian/western european traits mostly associated with germanic, greeko-roman, slavic and celtic ethnicity. There is a difference between the two and I would be more prudent that when mentionning that Western women are fetishized by eastern and middle eastern men due to the paleness of their skin due to beauty standards that can find their first expression in Antiquity. While pale skin is definitely a common standard of beauty for women in many cultures in many different era up to today, it doesn't mean it's linked/explains sexist and "pervy" behavior toward western women.

My point was that, in many cultures, pale skin has a long association with beauty which means that women from naturally light-skinned populations have long been desirable when they did come into contact with such cultures. There is ample historical record of this.

A thousands + years of cultural tradition are bound to impact modern preferences to some extent.

Even today light skin doesn't necessarily mean European, but that Europeans often have light skin makes them more likely to be perceived as attractive.

And it is not just about pervy behaviour. It was meant in the same way that Western Progressives may criticise Western males for 'fetishising' Asian women for their 'exotic beauty' without actually harassing them.

 

[Augustus]

How about responding to the points I made, rather those you believe I secretly made where you can't see them and only can guess at their meaning?

I was pointing out the points you made were less to do with what I actually said and more to do with your imagination.

And it is a modern cultural invention. The fetishization of Whiteness can by definition only go back for as far as Whiteness has existed.

Before there was capital W "Whiteness", there were people in Europe with light coloured skin who were the forebears of people today considered, for want of a better word, white.

Is it difficult to understand that people with fair skin were desired and that someone may refer to such people as 'white' in a very short and informal forum post and assume that the reader has sufficient intelligence to understand that this is not a reference to the modern concept of Whiteness (whatever that is supposed to mean)?

(Alternatively, if it helps, if someone talks of 'European peoples like the Vikings or Franks' would you find it impossible to comprehend that they may not actually suggesting that Europe was a meaningful and cohesive geo-political unit in the 9th C, but simply that these people came from the region we today know as Europe)

Tell me, which of these two women would you consider "white" by modern standards:

Seeing as you asked, and couldn't be more wrong about my actual views...

I consider monochromatic distinctions of race like "White" and "Person of Colour" (or 'white' and 'diverse') as meaningless if not outright racist. I'd be more than happy if they were never used again, but until then they sometimes suffice as a crude shorthand for ease of communication.

Many Berbers with pale skin and blue eyes would be 'whiter' than someone from Southern France, yet are still "brown POC" as they are "Africans".

Which Eastern Mediterranean people are 'white'? Greeks, 'Turks', Levantine 'Arabs', Palestinian 'Jews'? (these populations all have very similar genetic profiles, yet some would be 'brown' POC and others 'white' Southern Europeans based on modern political geography and historical colonialism).

It's like the dumb "Jesus was a brown Middle Easterner" trope. Based on speculative population genetics, you could just as easily say "Jesus was likely as white as a Southern European". Trying to say if Jesus would likely have been 'white' or a 'POC' is a very silly thing to do though.

The distinction between "white" Europe and "Brown" Middle East and North Africa ignores the fact that the Med was the historically linked civilisation with commonalities, and North Europe was a separate entity (well multiple separate entities).

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I think you are conflating pale skin with Caucasian/western european traits mostly associated with germanic, greeko-roman, slavic and celtic ethnicity. There is a difference between the two and I would be more prudent that when mentionning that Western women are fetishized by eastern and middle eastern men due to the paleness of their skin due to beauty standards that can find their first expression in Antiquity. While pale skin is definitely a common standard of beauty for women in many cultures in many different era up to today, it doesn't mean it's linked/explains sexist and "pervy" behavior toward western women.

Pale skin has so long been the thing, that even in Europe there have been trends of white women using makeup to make themselves appear ill and sickly because pale skin has been the thing. This is WAY before modern cultures, advertising, marketing, and other modern concerns we like to pretend are new. They aren't. And it's not just skin color, but elongated necks have been fetishized in Southeast Asia as small feet in China. Both of these practices are old, and both involve modifying the body in permanent ways that are damaging to the woman's body.
Or interesting example is ancient Sparta, where women would look and act like men to be more appealing to men.
Another interesting one is a time in French history where things were flipped and the men where more like peacocks.
And, ultimately and of course, we can even see in both the Old and New Testaments where it is mentioned women adorning themselves with jewels and styling their hair. Not men, women.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Another point:
Its often said history is Eurocentric. It's not. It revolves around Greece, Rome, and England. For many of us we aren't taught about our ancestor's struggles for freedom against Roman oppressions and invasions. We're taught our ancestors (most of Europe) were barbarians causing problems for Romans at their borders, a reason for the decline and fall of Rome.
We aren't taught to honor the sacrifices and fight against a tyrant, we're taught to glorify a tyrant who pillaged, plundered, raped, enslaved and butchered our ancestors. And then England, Spain, France, and Holland began expanding.
It's the Cradle of Civilization and the Code of Hammurabi to Helenistic Greeks and Peloponnesian War, jumps to Rome, fumbles around abit with post Rome and post West Rome, touches on the Italian contributions of the Renaissance, amd then it's England, France, Spain, and Holland taking most of the attention.
In the end, as other countries don't teach it like they do here, history is Americentric, not Eurocentric. It teaches what is important to America and what America values. And takes great leaps to avoid anything unflattering about it.

 

[Kooky]

I consider monochromatic distinctions of race like "White" and "Person of Colour" (or 'white' and 'diverse') as meaningless if not outright racist. I'd be more than happy if they were never used again, but until then they sometimes suffice as a crude shorthand for ease of communication.

Many Berbers with pale skin and blue eyes would be 'whiter' than someone from Southern France, yet are still "brown POC" as they are "Africans".

Which Eastern Mediterranean people are 'white'? Greeks, 'Turks', Levantine 'Arabs', Palestinian 'Jews'? (these populations all have very similar genetic profiles, yet some would be 'brown' POC and others 'white' Southern Europeans based on modern political geography and historical colonialism).

It's like the dumb "Jesus was a brown Middle Easterner" trope. Based on speculative population genetics, you could just as easily say "Jesus was likely as white as a Southern European". Trying to say if Jesus would likely have been 'white' or a 'POC' is a very silly thing to do though.

The distinction between "white" Europe and "Brown" Middle East and North Africa ignores the fact that the Med was the historically linked civilisation with commonalities, and North Europe was a separate entity (well multiple separate entities).

And yet, your entire argument seems to hinge on the idea that the "white women" so fetishized by Ottoman Sultans and Barbaresque slaveholders in their "harems" only ever came from Christian Europe. If you cannot observe such a stark distinction of skin color between European Christians and Levantine Muslims, then what exactly is your argument based on?

 

[Augustus]

And yet, your entire argument seems to hinge on the idea that the "white women" so fetishized by Ottoman Sultans and Barbaresque slaveholders in their "harems" only ever came from Christian Europe. If you cannot observe such a stark distinction of skin color between European Christians and Levantine Muslims, then what exactly is your argument based on?

The problem is you keep adding your own little imaginary flourishes to what I actually said and these keep on confusing you.

Never mind.

 

[Kooky]

The problem is you keep adding your own little imaginary flourishes to what I actually said and these keep on confusing you.

Never mind.

No, I'm sorry, but I do mind.

You come up with this claim about the supposed fetishization of "white women" throughout the history of the Levant, but can't back it up with either evidence or a coherent argument, and the minute I point out how inconsistent your own argument is, I get hostility combined with the strong insinuation that I'm a) uselessly pedantic, b) argueing in bad faith, and c) too confused to understand your argument, when you have not made even a token effort to explain what you are actually argueing about.

If you can't come up with halfway coherent argumentation to back up your claims, let alone even the slightest shred of evidence in support, then that's entirely on you, and getting offended at me for pointing that out is, frankly, absolutely unwarranted.

 

[Kooky]

Before there was capital W "Whiteness", there were people in Europe with light coloured skin who were the forebears of people today considered, for want of a better word, white.

Is it difficult to understand that people with fair skin were desired and that someone may refer to such people as 'white' in a very short and informal forum post and assume that the reader has sufficient intelligence to understand that this is not a reference to the modern concept of Whiteness (whatever that is supposed to mean)?

(Alternatively, if it helps, if someone talks of 'European peoples like the Vikings or Franks' would you find it impossible to comprehend that they may not actually suggesting that Europe was a meaningful and cohesive geo-political unit in the 9th C, but simply that these people came from the region we today know as Europe).

My point is that the argument as presented is completely incoherent:

1. What is "fair skin" supposed to mean here? I have pointed out - and you have agreed with me - that racial distinctions between "white" Christian Europeans and "nonwhite" Muslims are meaningless, racist, and also factually wrong, in that there are plenty of people living in the Muslim world who would qualify as "light skinned", "fair", or whatever other moniker we use to describe people with lighter-than-average hair and skin color.

2. You frame your argument of "white women" being fetishized entirely in terms of a) the slave trade, and b) slaves from Christian Europe, despite the fact that we agreed that it is simply not accurate to make that distinction! Yet you are still using a distinction you yourself called out as "meaningless" and "racist!

So where does that leave us?

 

[Augustus]

1. What is "fair skin" supposed to mean here? I have pointed out - and you have agreed with me - that racial distinctions between "white" Christian Europeans and "nonwhite" Muslims are meaningless, racist, and also factually wrong, in that there are plenty of people living in the Muslim world who would qualify as "light skinned", "fair", or whatever other moniker we use to describe people with lighter-than-average hair and skin color.

Your confusion seems to be that you think I said that only Europeans can be considered fair skinned rather than what I said which was Europeans can be considered fair skinned.

In societies that prized women with fair-skin, European slaves were often favoured due to their fair skin. This does not mean that only these women can be considered as having fair skin or that only these women were favoured.

2. You frame your argument of "white women" being fetishized entirely in terms of a) the slave trade, and b) slaves from Christian Europe, despite the fact that we agreed that it is simply not accurate to make that distinction! Yet you are still using a distinction you yourself called out as "meaningless" and "racist!

Again you seem to be confusing yourself by introducing your own flourish of "Whiteness" as some kind of racialist category rather than a description of a skin tone common to, but not exclusive to, the people of Europe.

And if you don't think fair-skin was prized, count the number of Ottoman Sultans with Sub-Saharan African mothers (or consider why harem eunuchs were generally black - it was like 'double insurance' against a fake heir).

Would you agree that modern European views of 'exotic' people have been impacted, to some extent, by imperial history?

If so why do you think that the same would not be true in other countries with their own imperial histories?