system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Was "racist" a word (or even a concept) when slavery was popular?

EDIT I wasn't very specific. I'm mainly wondering about America's early years when Africans were enslaved.
gpt
Depends on what you mean by "when slavery was popular." For most of human history, slaves were not of a given race, they were just unlucky people who couldn't pay their debts, were captured enemy soldiers, etc. Race didn't really have anything to do with it. If/when the slaves were freed, they could go about their lives and were treated like normal citizens.

With respect to the enslaving of the African peoples, that led into racism over time, in part because the Africans were less advanced and easier to enslave. In addition, this racism was noticed, and so yes, racism was a concept, if not one that was brought up very often.