I keep hearing people refer to Christianity and Judaism as European religions, or religions that Europe spread to the world. People also refer to diseases like smallpox and mumps as European.
If we’re talking about continents, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were born and lived in Asia. So did Jesus and Muhammad. Moses was born in Africa.
The first known cases of smallpox were in Egypt. Mumps seems to have come from China.
When Americans talk about Native Americans displaced westward, they describe them as victims of European imperialism. But people in Europe were once indigenous. People as far north as England were enslaved by Romans. Roman culture came from Greek, which came from Anatolia (Turkey), the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Egypt which are in Asia and Africa.
Why are all of them not considered victims of imperialism?
The point is not to blame Asia and Africa. I put those words there to show the folly of attaching intent to location on a map. People don’t act because they are Asian, African, or European, or whatever. They do act because of the conditions they respond to. The significance or Mesopotamia and Egypt are the river valleys of the Tigris, Euphrates, and Nile, as well as the local plants, animals, and climate. Those situations, and similar ones in other river valleys, led to the development of dominance hierarchy and imperialism, which took over, defeated, or assimilated all the groups they could.
Each group and individual is responsible for its own behavior, but how is any group that was assimilated and adopted the practices of dominating and imperializing any different than any other?
How are Native Americans who were forced to move westward different than Europeans who were forced to escape where they came from?
How are Native Americans who adopted cultures of dominance hierarchy and imperialism different from Europeans who did?
I think a lot of people judge people differently for parts of their identities different than their character, like the color of their skin, ethnicity, and such.
