[Antoninus]

So before Darwin, racism did not exist? Europeans and Americans thought Africans were their equals? They enslaved them for what? Oh, I recall, in America they counted as a fraction of a white man. And, you call me nuts.

No, it wasn't racism in the same sense. You'll recall that there were white "slaves" for a while too. And free blacks in the North who counted as a FULL person. Counting slaves as 3/5 of a person was actually something that was insisted upon by the Free states--the slave states wanted to count them as full people so they could have more representation in Congress.

And you'll recall that the British had as much or more contempt for the Irish than they ever had for black Africans.

The concept of superior/inferior races springs almost directly from social Darwinism in the mid-19th century.

[steve-b]

it wasn't racism in the same sense

Did Bill Clinton teach you to how to invent preposterous semantic distinctions for obfuscatory purposes, or did you teach him?

[steve-b]

And you'll recall that the British had as much or more contempt for the Irish than they ever had for black Africans.
The concept of superior/inferior races springs almost directly from social Darwinism in the mid-19th century.

Today's Free Advise: When you make mutually exclusive assertions, insert lots of padding between them. That way, you have some hope that the reader will forget the first one before encountering the second one, and thus fail to notice that you are spouting nonsense.