Race In The 17th Century

Words: 761
Pages: 4

The concept of race in the world has a very misunderstood history. Race in the 17th century compared to todays more progressive world is such a drastic change, even today compared to the 19th century is still a huge change. During the earlier time periods you will be able to see that much of their reasoning for having a racist mindset is based of hate and ridiculous ideologies. Society has changed its meaning of race in the 17th, 20th and 21st century.

During the 17th century much of everything was based off of religion including government, social hierarchy and the perspective of race. Also family blood line was important. The Code Noir is a perfect example of this. The Code Noir is a group of laws created by Louis XIV of the French Colonies in the Americas in 1685 that gave orders to make all Jews evacuate all French
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“To me there seems to be two possible lines of development: Apartheid or Partnership. Partnership means Cooperation of the individual citizens within a single community, irrespective of race…”. The idea of coexisting was spread out to a more widespread audience in a speech given in South Africa concerning the support of the apartheid. The part of the speech is stated above. As our society began to become more progressive, race began to be defined and “Associated with class, gender, sexuality, religion, psychology, nation, and the development of science”. A more tolerant viewpoint was born on a more grand scale during this time. However not everyone was as tolerant as today. “We’re going to keep all you niggers from running from running around with these white girls. I ought to take you off and hang you like we done that nigger in Mobile,…” Incidences like the one quoted above from Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy” still occurred. Occurrences like this show us how the hate and ignorance dated back since the 16th century is still alive today and we have still have work to