Climate theories of racial superiority were invented to justify existing slaveholding

Evidence

In studying Aristotle’s philosophy, Puritans learned rationales for human hierarchy, and they began to believe that some groups were superior to other groups. In Aristotle’s case, ancient Greeks were superior to all non-Greeks. But Puritans believed they were superior to Native Americans, the African people, and even Anglicans—that is, all non-Puritans. Aristotle, who lived from 384 to 322 BCE, concocted a climate theory to justify Greek superiority, saying that extreme hot or cold climates produced intellectually, physically, and morally inferior people who were ugly and lacked the capacity for freedom and self-government. Aristotle labeled Africans “burnt faces”—the original meaning in Greek of “Ethiopian”—and viewed the “ugly” extremes of pale or dark skins as the effect of the extreme cold or hot climates. All of this was in the interest of normalizing Greek slaveholding practices and Greece’s rule over the western Mediterranean. Aristotle situated the Greeks, in their supreme, intermediate climate, as the most beautifully endowed superior rulers and enslavers of the world. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 37

Categorization

• XREF: This is Kendi’s core inversion applied at the ancient level — policy (slaveholding) precedes the justifying idea (climate theory). Connects directly to the reader’s stated purpose of mastering this causal model.
• DEFINE: Explains the etymological origin of ‘Ethiopian’ — literally ‘burnt face’ — as a racializing label grounded in Aristotle’s climate theory.