While it peaked during the 19th century, Arabs purchasing and enslaving Black Africans has been going on since the 8th century. In the first 2-3 centuries of Islam, White slaves were better treated by Arabs than Black slaves were because they were thought of as 'refined' and less barbaric.
"Blacks are ugly and misshapen because they live in a hot country."
-Ibn Qutayba (828-89 A.D.)
"Inhabitants of sub-Saharan African countries are people distant from the standards of humanity,,, their nature is that of wild animals...."- Persian geographer Hudud al-`alam, 982 AD
Arabs (and Persians) have had contact with Black African cultures long before Europeans knew that Africa existed and long before they 'invented' the concept of 'race'.
Don't worry about where I get my information from. Just disprove my claims if you think that they're wrong.
You balked at the idea of there not having been any known civilization where the people did not have any kind of racial or ethnic bias, I mentioned the Arab history of racism against Africans and the studies about ethnic nepotism and the correlation between empathy and in/out-group membership to show that these claims are not baseless. The theory of kinship selection, popularized by W.D Hamilton but first introduced by Darwin himself, states that social animals typically have a preference (even if they don't consciously value kinship or blood relations) for behaving altruistically toward genetically similar animals over more distantly related animals and this is generally accepted among modern biologists (although competition exists more within species than outside, I'm sure). Europeans did not invent ethnic bias, conflict or favoritism, these are the default positions in pretty much every human culture and, on the contrary, it's only until relatively recently in history that we've really come to think of ourselves as 'just human' and view both identifying with and giving equal consideration to all members of the species as virtuous. Whether we should or not, your claim that the article's claim that there has never been any civilization without ethnic (you said 'racial' but similar idea) bias is baseless was baseless.
That's fine, I have no problem with you either. Disprove my argument or don't.
Right.
http://psychcentral.com/news/archives/2005-10/cdri-lto103105.html