Without writing a doctoral dissertation, I think it's safe to say that nearly ALL societies have had their racial issues. (See the OLD TESTAMENT re the Jews in Egypt. See the NT for Jews and Samaritans.)
But in my experience (grew up in Jim Crow South and with Cuban immigration), lived in NYC, where Puerto Ricans were the minority that attracted the most attention, now live 100 miles from Mexico, a group has to achieve sufficient numbers to become an issue.
In pre WWII Europe, the Germans were concerned with Jews--especially in the Slavic countries the Nazis wanted to conquer--but not so much with Africans, because there were millions and millions of Jews, while black Africans were so rare that nobody blinked at Josephine Baker's rise to stardom in Paris.
(To take another example, Iraq and Iran--for complicated reasons that had to do with anti-Semitism, yes, but also with colonial oppression from England and the US.--were ALLIES of the Germans.)
So you're right, there's no way to casually apply our racial constructions to another culture. Were there a lot of black nuns in Austria in 1938? Probably not, but it isn't a glaring anachronism like a black governor of Alabama would be in the same year.
Updated On: 11/17/13 at 10:57 PM
