Far too often, race and racism are casually defined as a socially constructed phenomenon without clarification as to how, who, when, where and why it came to be socially constructed. Given the gravity of its consequences, race and racism as inventions are central axioms to this research and, parenthetically, to current political discourse. Most of what we have learned about Africans is based on the observational relationship to whites from the perspective of whites and authenticated by the production and dissemination of visual culture portending to capture the essence of African people, as imagined by whites. Saving a few scholars such as Cheikh Anta Diop, John Henrik Clarke III, John Azumah, Martin Bernal, Peter J. Park, Nell Irvin Painter and Carol Anderson, the gaze of whiteness is generally telegraphed from a Greco-Roman point of view. It is not logical to me to create social stratifications based on mythical figures but I did not invent whiteness so I do not own that story. What I do own is the obligation to examine white history and its inventions of whiteness but not from the standard stock casually mentioned in historical texts. No, this topic has earned a deep and thorough analysis from an Afrocentric paradigm. John Azumah traces the advent of race and racism to circa 6101 AD when the Islamic religion was invented and is consistent with Clarke’s conclusions. That is where this chapter begins.

Rationale for Inventing Whiteness

The principle motivation for racializing slavery is not a concept invented post the so-called Enlightenment era. Indeed, there is historical precedence for whites subjugating Africans into bondage dating back to the seventh century by way of the so-called Arab-Oriental Slave Trade. Justifications for choosing African people was an empirical pseudo-scientific judgment of skin color based on Scriptural texts. The earliest literature produced by Abū ʿAbd Allāh Wahb b. Munabbih (d. 725-737 AD) shows he believed that, "Ham b. Nuh [Noah] was a [W]hite man having a beautiful face and form. However, Allah (to Him belongs the glory and power) changed his color and the color of his descendants because of his father’s curse. Ham went off, followed by his children […]. They are the Sudan… the descendants of Kush and Kanan are the races of the Sudan: the Nuba, the Zanj, the Qazan, the Zaghawa, the Habasha, the Qibt, and the Barbar."2

Subsequent writers Ibn Qutaybah, Al-Kisa’I and Ahmad Ibn Hanbal agreed with the doctrine of Munabbih’s Arab-Oriental pedigree argument, which is central to the production of a cultural history hinged on biblical notions of what Ham might have looked like. Historiographer Ibn Khaldūn wrote in his 1377 a priori epistle, The Muqaddimah; An Introduction to History, that he observed no differences between Sudanese people and animals: "Beyond them to the south, there is no civilization in the proper sense. There are only humans who are closer to dumb animals than to rational beings. They live in thickets and caves and eat herbs and unprepared grain. They frequently eat each other. They cannot be considered human beings3… They are ignorant of prophecy and do not have a religious law … Therefore, the Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because Negroes have little that is essentially human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals."4

Khaldūn’s findings weaponized dispensations of Munabbih’s philosophy with specific reference to the Sudanese who would later suffer various cultural appropriations in the Arab-Oriental Slave Trade such as the racial epithet, “Zanj”; however, Khaldūn disagrees with Munabbih’s version of physiognomic differences offering instead a pre-Darwinist version of natural selection to explain the phenomenon of “dark-skinned” peoples:

"It is mentioned in the Torah that Noah cursed his son Ham. No reference is made there to blackness. The curse included no more than that Ham’s descendants should be the slaves of his brothers’ descendants. To attribute the blackness of the Negroes to Ham, reveals disregard of the true nature of heat and cold and of the influence they exercise upon the air (climate) and upon the creatures that come into being in it. The black color (of skin) common to the inhabitants of the first and second zones is the result of the composition of the air in which they live, and which comes about under the influence of the greatly increased heat in the south…People there have (to undergo) a very severe summer, and their skins turn black because of the excessive heat. There, a white color (of skin) is common among the inhabitants, likewise the result of the composition of the air in which they live, and which comes about under the influence of the excessive cold in the north. The sun is always on the horizon within the visual field (of the human observer), or close to it. It never ascends to the zenith, nor even (gets) close to it. The heat, therefore, is weak in this region, and the cold severe in (almost) all seasons. In consequence, the color of the inhabitants is white, and they tend to have little body hair. Further consequences of the excessive cold are blue eyes, freckled skin, and blond hair."5