Go Deeper Into Race
- Slavery predates race. Throughout much of human history, societies have enslaved others, often as a result of conquest or war, even debt, but not because of physical characteristics or a belief in natural inferiority. Due to a unique set of historical circumstances, ours was the first slave system where all the slaves shared similar physical characteristics.
Slavery in ancient times was most common within the set society. The Romans enslaved each other and foreigners the Greeks enslaved each other, they are some of the most common examples of comparison between ancient and modern society. A very popular form of slavery in Greece was debt slavery. Families would go into slavery to pay back a debt they had. Slavery used to never be about race. The physical characteristics of slaves did not matter to people until the 1600s. Slaves no matter what they looked like had always been thought of a being less than other people, when race was brought into slavery it was because somebody thought that just because Africans and Native Americans looked and loved differently from the colonizers they were to be slaves.