If radical scholars were really concerned about racist lapses from our great modern guiding principle of gens una sumus, they wouldn't look to a distant past where that principle could never have prevailed. They could instead easily find examples of whole societies where that "racist" ideology is still alive and well - in the Middle East, for example. But instead of looking for racism where it is blatant and abundant, they seek it in the one place where it's getting hard to find - in their own society. That discrepancy tells us what really motivates these scholars: not the correction of racism, but a radical determination to condemn the society that they themselves are part of.
- From A Short History of Relations Between Peoples: How the World Began to Move Beyond Tribalism by John M. Ellis
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