
Michelangelo, Unfinished Slave
2,116 words
Translations: Czech, French, Spanish
One of the perennial accusations against white colonial societies around the globe—in the Americas, Africa, and the Antipodes—is that they are morally illegitimate because other people were there first. This is what I call the “autochthony argument,” from the Greek “αὐτόχθων,” meaning “springing from the land,” i.e., indigenous. According to this argument, the original inhabitants of a land are its rightful owners (“finders-keepers”), and it is a violation of these rights for other peoples to displace them. Read more …
Sepulveda vs. Las Casas: A Battle Over Race in the Spanish Empire
Metropolitan Cathedral of Mexico City
1,253 words
The Spanish Empire stands as one of the great landmarks of white civilization. Thousands of men set forth from Iberia to find and conquer a new world, facing all manner of hardships and misery. Unfortunately, the lands the conquistadors settled are, for the most part, racial hellholes. The natives may have lost the battles, Read more …