White supremacy’s roots in America and US traced back to a Pope in 1493

RELIGIONS NEWS AGENCY (REDNA) – The continuing belief in white supremacy in Europe and the United States owes its origin not to the founding fathers, but to Pope Alexander VI, who in 1493 gave Christopher Columbus a religious justification to colonise the new lands.

That’s the verdict of American author Dr Robert P Jones,  whose book “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future”  was the subject of our latest Big Interview. He refers to the papal bull that gave Columbus divine authorisation to occupy lands that were not already held by Christians, to steal from and kill the people who already lived there and to reduce them to perpetual slavery.

Dr Jones concludes that this  “doctrine of discovery” sets the moral template for European engagement with indigenous peoples across the Americas, something that he says is still with us today and “is at the heart of some of our deepest political conflicts.”