Episode
Racism Through History (Get A PhD in Racism)
- Published
- Jun 29, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3821
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Summary
In this episode of Based Camp, Simone and Malcolm Collins dive deep into the forbidden history of group-based stereotypes and cultural pattern recognition from ancient Egypt through Renaissance Europe. This is the dark lore mainstream education won’t touch — what Egyptians really thought of Nubians and Libyans, Greek views of “effete” Persians and rowdy Macedonians, Roman donkey-god graffiti mocking Jews and Christians, medieval antisemitic pig-suckling art that makes modern versions look tame, and the surprising origins of the “French Vice,” “Italian Vice,” and “English Vice.” The Collinses explore how what we now call racism was once just observed averages, patterns, and tribal jokes — not modern ideological sin. No moralizing. Just raw historical context on how humans have always categorized “us vs. them.” Show Notes With the release of Talkie, a 13M “vintage” language model trained only on pre-1931 text, people realized just how casual, widespread, and matter-of-fact prejudice was in even the recent past. Ancient Egypt Different groups were absolutely depicted, mostly with Egyptians being reddish, nubians being black, Asiatics being tan (and often bearded), and Libyans being white (and often bearded) Nubians as people to conquered Texts and artistic programs from pharaonic Egypt sometimes emphasize Nubia as a land to be subdued and exploited, supporting a stereotype of Nubians as “barbaric” or less civilized compared to Egypt. * See:Critique of the “Black Pharaohs” Theme: Racist Perspectives of Egyptian and Kushite/Nubian Interactions in Popular Media https://www.jstor.org/stable/48763823 Canaanites/Asiatics as rebellious and treacherous * Egyptian sources portray peoples to the northeast of the nile (“Asiatics,” including Levantine groups) as culturally suspect, o…