Romans \'were not colour prejudiced\', research shows

[Urselius]

We look at the concept of racism as judged by skin colour through the distorting lens of the Slave Trade, where Sub-saharan Africans were trafficked to the Americas to provide labour. As these people were treated abominably by Europeans, who didn't practice slavery amongst themselves, a sort of post-fact reasoning based on their differences from Europeans, the main one being skin colour, was used to justify the trade. That is, Black Africans were sufficiently 'not the same as us' that they could be treated as though they were sub-human. Thus skin colour became an important way of judging people and being prejudiced about them.

Outright slavery of Europeans by Europeans died out gradually from c. 900 to c. 1200 AD. Before that, and especially before Christianity, slave status could be held by people of any racial origin, social status and skin colour were not linked in any way. The Romans, though as guilty as any other people of national chauvanism, were not at all predisposed to be particularly prejudiced towards variations in skin colour. The authors of the piece are guilty of projecting modern expectations on Roman attitudes. I just doesn't work and is very sloppy thinking indeed.