The Genesis of Western Racism
Let’s investigative how “othering” morphed into “Racism” & the entanglement between “anti-Semitism” & “Islamophonia” in the context of the emergence of “Spain” as an empire under Queen “Isabella”. We start by setting the context leading to Isabella’s rise to power, within which formed “white/christianity”, “color/non-christian” as intertwined & interchangeable meaning, and the subsequent devaluation of human value, and eventual dehumanizing, of different groups & peoples (e.g. jews, north Africans, muslims, arabs, black, indigenous….)
Context: Al-Andalus and the “Purity of Blood” (Limpieza de Sangre)
To understand Isabella’s rise, we must first understand the society that preceded her. For centuries, the Iberian Peninsula was a multi-religious society under Muslim rule (Al-Andalus), characterized by both conflict and coexistence (convivencia). Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived in relative proximity, with Jewish and Muslim communities often possessing significant cultural, administrative, and economic influence.
The Reconquista (Reconquest) was the centuries-long campaign by Christian kingdoms to expand southward, reclaiming territory from Muslim rule. This process was ideologically framed as a religious crusade, creating a political identity deeply intertwined with militant Christianity. As David Nirenberg, a leading scholar of medieval Iberia, argues, violence against religious “others” (particularly Jews) was not constant but was a “constitutive violence”—a recurring tool used by Christian authorities to define and reinforce their own community’s boundaries [1].
The critical turning point was the Pogroms of 1391. Waves of violent attacks swept across Christian Spain, leading to the mass murder, forced conversion, or displacement of thousands of Jews. This event created a new social category: the conversos (Jewish converts to Christianity, also known as New Christians).
The Rise of Isabella and the Finalization of Religious Purity
Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon married in 1469, unifying the two most powerful Christian kingdoms. Their reign (1474-1504) was dedicated to centralizing royal power and creating a homogenous Catholic state.
The Morisco Problem: After the fall of the last Muslim kingdom, Granada, in 1492, the Muslim population faced similar pressures. Forced conversions created Moriscos (Muslim converts to Christianity). They, too, were persecuted by the Inquisition and subject to limpieza de sangre statutes, culminating in their eventual expulsion between 1609 and 1614.
The Spanish Inquisition (1478): Established by a papal bull at the monarchs’ request, the Inquisition was a state-controlled institution unique in Europe. Its primary target was not openly practicing Jews or Muslims, but the conversos. It was suspected that many conversos were “crypto-Jews,” secretly practicing their old faith. The Inquisition’s purpose was to root out this perceived heresy within Christian society [2]. This represented a key shift: othering was no longer just about external groups, but about policing internal purity.
The “Purity of Blood” Statutes (Limpieza de Sangre): The Inquisition gave rise to the doctrine of limpieza de sangre. These were legal statutes enacted by various institutions (e.g., guilds, universities, the church itself) that prohibited anyone with Jewish or Muslim ancestry from holding positions of power. As historian Henry Kamen explains, this was a radical departure from earlier prejudice: “What was new was the emphasis on blood… Heresy was now seen as a question of race, transmitted by blood, not a question of belief that could be repented” [3]. This is the crucial moment where religious othering begins to morph into a proto-racial ideology. A person’s value and status were now determined by imagined biological inheritance, not just their faith.
The Alhambra Decree (1492): In the same year Columbus reached the Americas, Isabella and Ferdinand issued the Edict of Expulsion, ordering all Jews who refused conversion to leave Spain. This was the logical conclusion of their project: if a “stain” of Jewishness persisted in the blood of conversos, then the presence of openly practicing Jews was seen as a contaminating influence that had to be eradicated entirely.
Entanglement with Anti-Islam and the “Color/Non-Christian” Coupling
The Iberian context directly linked anti-Judaism with anti-Islam. The “enemy” was both the internal Jew (the converso) and the external Muslim (the Moor). This fusion created a potent ideology that would be exported to the Americas.
- The “Crusading” Ideology: The centuries-long war against Al-Andalus created a cultural schema where “Christian” was synonymous with “civilized” and “rightful ruler,” while “Muslim” was synonymous with “infidel” and “usurper.” This binary was easily transferable to Indigenous and African peoples encountered in the New World.
- From Religious to “Racial” Dehumanization: The concept of limpieza de sangre provided a bureaucratic and legal model for ranking human value based on ancestry. When Spaniards encountered the immense physical and cultural diversity of the Americas, they did so through this pre-existing lens. The “purity” of Christian blood was mapped onto a new hierarchy where “whiteness” (European ancestry) and Christianity became conflated with superiority, while indigenousness and African ancestry, linked with paganism and Islam (as many enslaved Africans were Muslim), became markers of inferiority and justification for enslavement [4].
The Spanish Empire, born from Isabella’s project of religious purification, became the first to systematize a global hierarchy of human types, laying the groundwork for the modern constructs of race and racism.
A crisis of conscience
Bartolomé de Las Casas, a contemporary of Columbus and the first priest to
be ordained in the Americas, began his life in the new world as a gentleman
priest who owned slaves. After a crisis of conscience, initially precipitated
by the sermon of Montesinos, de las Casas joined the Dominican order and
became a vehement and tireless champion of the indigenous and critic of
the Spanish conquerors.
“The reason the Christians have murdered on such a vast scale and killed
anyone and everyone in their way is purely and simply greed. . . . Their
insatiable greed and overweening ambition know no bounds; the land is
fertile and rich, the inhabitants simple, forbearing and submissive. The
Spaniards have shown not the slightest consideration for these people,
treating them (and I speak from first-hand experience, having been there
from the outset) not as brute animals – indeed, I would to God they had
done and had shown them the consideration they afford their animals – so
much as piles of dung in the middle of the road. They have had as little
concern for their souls as for their bodies, all the millions that perished
having gone to their deaths with no knowledge of God and without the
benefit of the Sacraments. One fact in all this is widely known and beyond
dispute, for even the tyrannical murderers themselves acknowledge the
truth of it: the indigenous peoples never did the Europeans any harm
whatever; on the contrary, they believed them to have descended from the
heavens, at least until they or their fellow citizens had tasted, at the hands
of these oppressors, a diet of robbery, murder, violence, and all other
manner of trials and tribulations.”Source: Historia de las Indias, written 1550-156
― Bartolome de Las Casas (1474 – 1566)