> The ancient Greeks also had slaves. They were not Negroes but white men who had been taken captive in war. There could be no talk of racial differences.
As Slavic I find this inaccurate and bit offensive :-)
Most people in America would consider a Slavic person white.
There is no scientific definition of "white", it is a social construct that has changed to be more inclusive as various groups integrated into American society.
What is weird from my perspective is how the races as concepts still are accepted and used, even though they are ambiguous and deeply problematic. For example those that have the "pleasure" of hearing "but you are white" will understand that there is a scale of whiteness and you've just been graded on that scale.
Unless and until our recent era of mass global travel results in a highly genetically uniform species, we will continue to have population groups that share allele groupings differently than other population groups which share different allele groupings.
I don't know the history of it, but it seems likely that Greece waged a lot of war with the (slavic) countries north of it, so their slaves would be predominantly of slavic descent. Slavic people also have a pretty easily discernable look to them, at least many do, so it's not hard to imagine they could be subject to racial discrimination in Greece.
As Slavic I find this inaccurate and bit offensive :-)