Interesting point: The idea of a 'White' Race (or any 'Race') is fairly recent. The internecine strife between, for instance, the ancient israelites and the Caananites for instance would have fit the idea of ethnic cleansing but they would never have thought to be the one 'Semitic' race.
The idea of 'race' as a unifying, or universal, set ot traits was not a concept. If anything religion was probably a concept first. Hence the idea of 'Christendom'.