Spain’s blood purity laws constitute an early biological racism
Evidence
This book has argued that empire, in various forms, has served as the crucible of anti-Muslim racism. In Chapter 1 we saw how Spain, the leading empire in the period of mercantile imperialism, developed possibly the first biological notion of race through its blood purity laws. The full force of these laws was applied first to Sephardic Jews and then to Spanish Muslims. Both groups faced systematic discrimination over a long period of time and were expelled in a process that we would today call ethnic cleansing. However, this was still a nascent form of racism, or protoracism, since it combined religious persecution with modern bodily or somatic notions of race. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 728
Categorization
- XREF: Aligns with Junaid Rana’s thesis on race originating in Christian Spain’s limpieza de sangre — a key node in the existing Islamophobia cluster. — connects to: Early modern Spain and Portugal pioneered hereditary notions of bodily racial difference. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 114; Early modern blood-purity racism inherited heresy suspicion, not intellectual inferiority; Blood purity laws racialized religious difference in medieval Spain. (+4 more)
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 728
Broader Connections
- Blood purity laws racialized religious difference in medieval Spain.
#corroborates(0.95) - Spanish persecution of conversos shows race-like ideology existed before modern racism
#corroborates(0.92) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 503 - Purity of blood laws served to exclude converts and elevate Old Christians
#expands(0.90) - Modern biological racism grew out of earlier religious antipathy toward converts
#expands(0.85) — Nasar Meer, Tariq Modood, Refutations of Racism in the ‘Muslim…, 48 - Race originated as a cultural-religious distinction legislated into biological heredity
#corroborates(0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 724