You know, everytime someone says “Racism = tribalism and has existed since the beginning of time”, I swear someone takes an angel in the back and shoots it in the head.
It’s not only so very, very wrong, it’s demonstrably wrong. You can talk to the tribes today about their history. You can look at pictures and writings of the past that specifically have different looking people as the part of the same culture.
Sure, bigotry existed but that can be as granular as town vs town, team vs team, cheerleaders vs goth. Bigotry is to racism as murder is to genocide.
Here’s an additional thought. Whiteness doesn’t divorce a person from humanity all the time; instead it sets the “white experience” as the default experience. Which, in practice means a white person can play at being human all they want… until something contradicts that.
And that contradiction, that challenge to the ‘default framework’ is what drives many white people into a frenzy. It’s why they can claim to “see no color” in one moment. Then categorically create systems of direct oppression unironically in another.