“Let us remember that the automatic machine, whatever we think of any feelings it may have or may not have, is the precise eco-analogy of slave/machine” - Norbert Weiner (1950)

Robots in scenarios such as R.U.R. are often compared to marginalised groups. Sometimes, they are seen to represent women, other times they appear as a perfect image of a Marxian working class.
Indeed, these groups have in common that they are oppressed and exploitered by another group.
Yet, 'robot' marginalisation goes beyond those types of oppression, as it fundamentally entails that they are not human.
Hence, it can be argued that "blacks were the first robots", since black people were dehumanised to justify slavery.

"It was in 1920 when old Rossum, still a young man then but a great scientist, came to live on this isolated island in order to study marine biology."

"On the Niger and in the wilds of Africa, it has existed for thousands of years, excluded from the observation of the scientific world."

Karel Čapek, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)(1921)

Samuel Cartwright, Report on the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race (1851)

Helena: I’ve come here with plans to start a revolution among your horrible robots!

Domin (jumping up): A robot revolution?!
Haha, Miss Glory, you’ll never manage that! A robot revolution! You might more easily start a revolution among the nails and bobbins in the spinning mill than among our robots! (sitting)

"In Negro life the characteristic point is the fact that consciousness has not yet attained to the realization of any substantial objective existence" (Hegel, The Philosophy of History, 1956)

WHO ARE THE ROBOTS? 

First,

Click play while you read :)

HISTORY

What if robots already existed 100 years ago? 

"Sulla isn’t a person, Miss Glory, she’s a robot."

"Alongside his studies, he made several attempts to synthesize the chemical structure of living tissues, known as protoplasm, and he eventually discovered a material that behaved just the same as living tissue despite being, chemically, quite different."

"There's nothing more different from people than a robot"

"Man made of different material than we are."

"Sulla doesn't have feelings"

"They've got no sense of pleasure.
They're less than grass"

"They’ve got no will of their own. No passions. No hopes.
No soul."

Dr. Gall: That’s right. Robots have virtually no sense of physical pain, as young Rossum simplified the nervous system a bit too much. That turns out to have been a mistake and so we’re working on pain now.
Helena: Why... why... if you don’t give them a soul why do you want to give them pain?

Dr. Gall: For good industrial reasons, Miss Glory. The robots sometimes cause themselves damage because it causes them no pain.

"A body made for production"

"He wanted, in some scientific way, to take the place of God"

"After the age of research came the age of production"

"What young Rossum invented was a worker with the least needs possible."

"He threw out the man and put in the robot"

Helena: Why don’t you create a soul for them?

Dr. Gall: That’s not within our power.

Fabry: That wouldn’t be in our interest.

"The best sort of worker is the cheapest worker"

"People cost too much" 

"Robots are bought and sold"

"Even the negro's brain and nerves, the chyle and all the humors, are tinctured with a shade of the pervading darkness"

"His bones are whiter and harder than those of the white race, owing to their containing more phosphate of lime and less gelatine."

"His brain is a ninth or tenth less than that of other men"

"There is the same difference in the flesh of the white and black man, in regard to color, that exists between the flesh of the rabbit and the hare."

"They are apt to do much mischief, which appears as if intentional, but is mostly owing to the stupidness of mind and insensibility of the nerves"

"The mind is too torpid to meditate mischief, or even to be aroused by the angry passions to deeds of daring."

"A torpor and insensibility pervades the system; the sentient nerves distributed to the skin lose their feeling to so great a degree, that he often burns his skin by the fire he hovers over, without knowing it, and frequently has large holes in his clothes"

"The fact of the existence of such a complaint, making man like an automaton or senseless machine, (…) can be clearly established by the most direct and positive testimony"

"insensible to pain when subjected to punishment"

"‘genu flexit’ written in the physical structure of his knees, being more flexed or bent, than any other kind of man."

"The great primary truth, that the negro is a slave by nature, and can never be happy, industrious, moral, or religious, in any other condition than the one he was intended to fill"

"Instinctive feeling of dependency on others"

"The Creator’s will in regard to the negro; it declares him to be the submissive knee-bender"

"If treated kindly, well fed and clothed, with fuel enough to keep a small fire burning all night, separated into families, each having its own house- not permitted to run about at night, or to visit their neighbors, or to receive visits, or to use intoxicating liquors, and not overworked or exposed too much to the weather, they are very easily governed."

"If the white man attempts to oppose the Deity’s will, by trying to make the negro anything else than ‘the submissive knee-bender’, (which the Almighty declared he should be,) by trying to raise him to a level with himself."

"The three millions of bales of cotton, made by negro labor, afford a cheap clothing for the civilized world"