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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31885 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.

Franklin went quite a bit further.

But not even Franklin would have denied those swarthy beasts their Europeanness. This is not a matter of racialism, this is purely incoherent, they are native to Europe in any sense that Saxons are. And it is incoherent to say "She's a fair skinned Latina, not white. Whiteness is about pure European heritage" when the person in question is of European – including South European – stock.

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