The root problem—from Henry to Trump—has always been the self-interest of racist power. Powerful economic, political, and cultural self-interest—the primitive accumulation of capital in the case of royal Portugal and subsequent human traders—has been behind racist policies. Powerful and brilliant intellectuals in the tradition of Gomes Eanes de Zurara then produced racist ideas and races to justify the racist policies of their era, to redirect the blame for their era’s racial inequities and injustices away from those policies and onto people.
