The pre-racial character of Iberian persecution rested on the availability of conversion

Evidence

A series of four genocides in the “long sixteenth century” is posited as constituting the sociohistorical conditions of possibility for this transformation. The first of these was the “genocide” against the Muslims and Jews of Andalusia, who were forced to convert under the doctrine of “purity of blood.” Yet, Dussel acknowledges that by virtue of the very possibility of conversion, the Castillian project was not yet racial, for integration was still a viable, if not desirable, option. “The humanity of the victims was not in question.” — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 170

Categorization

• XREF: The conversion-versus-race distinction echoes the blood-purity debates examined in discussions of limpieza de sangre and connects to later theories of racialization as a distinctively modern phenomenon. — connects to: Iberian blood-purity laws served a political project of class elevation and exclusion