Tangentially related to the last rb but it is weird to me when people act like mixed race people just didn’t Happen historically. Cause like, yeah the world used to be Less connected than it is now so certain combinations could be unlikely depending on specific times and locations, there were anti miscegenation laws, etc etc, but. The thing about people is that they have boats and it’s notoriously difficult to stop them from having sex with each other. Also the pillaging but I assure you it could be consensual, even
There’s this narrative that’s like… everyone just stayed where they were from and Europe Used To Be White, Dammit & it’s very provably False. Because people have had boats and sex for like thousands and thousands of years. & people will sometimes bring this up to be like “well yeah, the pillaging” and that’s absolutely a significant part of it! But people also just… Have Babies Sometimes
Strangest thing is how… historical mixing denialism ??? Will come from white supremacists obviously but the same ideas will be echoed by just anybody. And every so often there’ll be some story that’s like “Dutch man finds out he’s .02% Maori for some reason” “medieval european knew black people existed?” & it’s like Yeah dude … the boat
It was probably very similar to today though: much higher racial mixing in big cities and very homogeneous in the rural areas.
I moved a lot as a kid. In large cities, I went to school with a diverse range of nationalities, when I moved to a rural town/city (20,000 people), there were one or two families who weren’t white in my entire 1300 student high school. This rural town was 2 hours from Toronto, one of the most multicultural cities in the world.
I don’t think it’s unrealistic for a person who lived in a rural, inland town to have never even seen a person of another race in the past. However, a person living in a port city? No way.