ABSTRACT
Racial prejudice and stereotyping arose with the expansion of merchant capital and the origins of capitalist slavery, beginning in the fifteenth century; the former continues in the twentieth as a necessary concomitant of the reproduction of global capitalism. But it is highly significant that the origins and growth of contemporary forms of racism coincide historically with the maturing of the capitalist mode of production in Europe and the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century. While the history of anthropology exhibits both racist and anti-racist movements and explanatory frameworks, there have been relatively few attempts by anthropologists to study the persistence of the more hidden racist categories of global culture, which are still dominated by white, male, hegemonic interests; and this stricture applies also to ostensibly “socialist” formations such as Cuba. European planters and miners enslaved Africans for economic reasons, so that their labor power could be exploited.
