General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why I don't like the term "white privilege" [View all]shaayecanaan
(6,068 posts)the temperate regions in Europe were more suited to growing cereal crops (tropical agriculture in Asia and Africa is difficult, there is no winter to keep the bugs down, and the humidity and fungus rapidly destroy stored grain).
Europeans were therefore able to accumulate a substantial food surplus. There can be no trade without a surplus, and no capitalism without trade. This gave the Europeans a substantial advantage over Africans, which led to industrialisation, slavery and colonialism.
Europeans were the last major population movement out of Africa. As recently as 5,000 years ago, Europeans were still physically Black (the Bordeaux cave paintings for example depict the local people as having dark skin).
It was, ironically, the birth of primitive agrarian capitalism that led to the rapid development of white skin amongst Europeans. The switch from a hunter-gatherer food intake to cereals resulted in a diet that was deficient in Vitamin D, which humans can source from sunlight.
Ironically then, even the physical development of race itself was a consequence of class. Europeans developed light hair and skin as an adaptation to cope with their new status as an agrarian rather than a hunter-gatherer society.