NATURE AND CONVENTION RACE LAW AND CUSTOM

'The white, black and Indian races, he wrote, were not only "naturally distinct," but "hostile." He saw the whites as a superior civilization--a judgment validated, it still seems to me, by their supremacy on the continent--while the other two races  had only their "misfortunes" in common.' DK

Tocqueville equated Germans, both ancient, feudal, and modern it seems, as well as all of feudalism itself, as relatively less civilized savagery (The British, and the French, of course, also each privately considered the others species of still uncivilized barbarians really):

"In all that we call Germanic institutions I am tempted to see nothing but barbaric habits and to regard what we call feudal ideas as the opinions of savages." (AT)

'The white people, he argued, were an aristocracy defined by natural differences.  Given that it had proven so hard to remove the privileges of European aristocrats that were defined only by law, he argued, it seemed impossible that equality could be established among those divided by the color of their skin.  "I plainly see," he wrote, "that in some parts of the country the legal barrier between the two races is tending to come down, but not that of mores.  I see that slavery is in retreat, but the prejudice from which it arose is immovable . . .race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in states where slavery was never known."  Even in the northern states where black citizens theoretically enjoyed equal rights, he reported, they were too afraid to assert them.  Those states that had abolished slavery had done so not to help the black man, but to help the white, both by leaving free labor without the competition of slaves and by eliminating the corrupting influence of owning slaves upon the whites.   Tocqueville wrote at length on how slavery in the South had taught white people to scorn work, and to cultivate the traditional vices of aristocracy.' DK

"Eliminated by law, segregation has largely persisted by custom." DK

This is all a highly complex group of subjects. There are certain themes, and views, that go back to antiquity.

The discussion has been carried into modern times, usually under various pairs of terms, often involving schools of thought as well as social and natural science disciplinary distinctions, not always consistently comparable with each other: physis nomos, unwritten laws versus written laws, nature convention, nature nurture, realism nominalism, idealism empiricism, instinct law, materialism or physicalism versus either idealism dualism pluralism or monism etc., nature culture, convention (or tradition) law, nature custom, etc.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/sophists/

Cf. Peter Winch, Nature and Convention, Man and Society in Hobbes and Rousseau, Magic and Witchcraft among the Azande, Understanding a Primitive Society, The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy.

A good, perhaps the best, source, re the Greek discussion in antiquity, is certainly W K C Guthrie, Volume three.