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Racism is a belief system or doctrine which states that inherent biological differences between human races determine cultural or individual achievement — with a corollary that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

Some writers have used the term racism to refer to preference for one's own ethnic group (ethnocentrism), fear of foreigners (xenophobia), views against interracial relationships (miscegenation), and/or generalizations about a specific group of people (stereotype).

Racism has been a motivating factor in social discrimination, racial segregation and violence, including genocide. Politicians are known to practice race baiting in an effort to win votes. The term racist has been a pejorative term since at least the 1940s, and the identification of a group or person as racist is often controversial.

Definitions of racism

When racism is applied in practice, it takes forms such as prejudice, segregation or subordination. Racism can more narrowly refer to a system of oppression, such as institutional racism.

Historian Barbara Field argued in Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America that racism is a "historical phenomenon" that does not explain racial ideology at all. She suggests that investigators should consider the term to be an American rhetorical device, with a historical explanation. She suggests that using race as a word with real meaning is a common error akin to superstition. However, other scholars say that races do exist, and that the concept has significant meaning.

Organizations and institutions that put racism into action discriminate against and marginalize a class of people who share a common racial designation. The term racism is usually applied to the dominant group in a society, because it is that group which has the means to oppress others. The term can also apply to any individual or group, regardless of social status or dominance.

Racism can be both overt and covert. Individual racism sometimes consists of overt acts by individuals, which can result in violence or the destruction of property. Institutional racism is often more covert and subtle. It often appears within the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and frequently receives less public condemnation than the overt type.

W.E.B. DuBois argued that racialism is the belief that differences between the races exist, be they biological, social, psychological, or in the realm of the soul. He argued that racism is using this belief to promote the idea that one's race is superior to the others.

According to Jared Diamond in his work Guns, Germs and Steel, race is essentially a social and historical construction. He argues that it has no real basis in science, nor can it be used to explain why Europe gained the upper hand in world conquests.

Molefi Asante, an African American academic, describes racism as a "wall of ignorance" that hides the long history of racial injustice from public consciousness. He argues that most whites view racism as a thing of the past; a problem that was solved by civil rights. He says African Americans continue to experience racism in many areas of social life.

On occasion, individualism has been denounced as a form of racism. In 2006, Seattle Public Schools posted a definition of racism on its website, stating that favoring individualism over collectivism and having a "future time orientation" were examples of racism because they favored "white culture" over viewpoints indigenous to other groups. After much criticism, they removed these statements from their site.

A 1963 essay by Ayn Rand denounced racism as a crude form of collectivism. Rand said racism "is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage — the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors."

Racial discrimination

Racial discrimination is treating people differently based on race. While this term usually refers to unfair treatment of minority racial groups in western societies, it can also refer to the opposite situation — which is described by some as reverse discrimination when it is due to affirmative action or other attempts to remedy past or current discrimination against minority racial groups. The term has been criticized on the basis that there is nothing "reverse" about discrimination, but discrimination is simply discrimination everywhere it's seen.

Researchers at the University of Chicago (Marianne Bertrand) and Harvard University (Sendhil Mullainathan) found in a 2003 study that there was widespread discrimination in the workplace against job applicants whose names were merely perceived as "sounding black". These applicants were 50% less likely than candidates perceived as having "white-sounding names" to receive callbacks for interviews, no matter their level of previous experience. Results were stronger for higher quality résumés. The researchers view these results as strong evidence of unconscious biases rooted in the United States' long history of discrimination.

Another example of racial discrimination was Apartheid in South Africa, and the system of Jim Crow laws in the United States. Another example is the discriminatory lending patterns of some banks, and the policy of redlining.

International documents against racial discrimination

The United Nations uses the definition of racial discrimination laid out in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, adopted in 1966:

...any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.(Part 1 of Article 1 of the U.N. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination)

In 2000, the European Union banned racism along with many other forms of social discrimination:

Article 21 of the charter prohibits discrimination on any ground such as sex, race, color, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, disability, age or sexual orientation and also discrimination on the grounds of nationality.

Academic racism

Academic racism is the prejudicial study of human societies, cultures, languages and peoples in circles of academia. In relation to African people, academic racism was formed during times of slavery and colonialism, in order to remove any form of noble claim from the victims of these systems. Owen 'Alik Shahadah stated,

Africans... are impervious and indifferent to any form of civilization, a people absent from scientific discovery, philosophy or the higher arts. We are left to assume that almost nothing can come out of Africa , other than raw material.

Scottish philosopher and economist David Hume said

I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilised nation of that complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or in speculation. No ingenious manufacture among them, no arts, no sciences”.

German philisopher Immanuel Kant stated: "The yellow Indians do have a meagre talent. The Negroes are far below them, and at the lowest point are a part of the American people.

In the nineteenth century, the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel declared that "Africa is no historical part of the world." This view that Africa had no history was repeated by Hugh Trevor-Roper, Regius Professor of History at Oxford University, as late as 1963. During the Nazi era German scientist rearranged academia to support claims of a grand Aryan agent behind the splendors of all human civilizations, including India and Ancient Egypt.

Scientific racism

Scientific racism refers to the use of science (or the veneer of science) to justify and support racist beliefs. The use of science to justify racist beliefs goes back to at least the early 18th century, though it gained most of its influence in the mid-19th century. Works such as Arthur Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-1855) attempted to frame racism within the terms of biological difference among human beings.

L.S.B. Leakey, in The Progress And Evolution Of Man In Africa (Oxford University Press, 1961) stated "Indeed, I would be inclined to suggest that however great may be the physical differences between such races as the European and the Negro, the mental and psychological differences are greater still."

It became common to consider some races more evolved than others. Even Charles Darwin, who was an active abolitionist and considered all humans to be of the same species (against a trend of polygenism at the time), believed that there were inherent biological differences in the mental capacities of different races. Ideologies such as social Darwinism and eugenics promoted racist views. Some scientists argued against biological reenforcement of racism, even if they believed that biological races did exist. However, in the fields of anthropology and biology, these were minority positions until the mid-20th century.

During the rise of Nazism in Germany, many scientists in Western nations worked to debunk the regime's racial theories. This — combined with repulsion to Nazi eugenics and the racial motivations behind the the Holocaust — led to a change in opinions about scientific research into race in the years following World War II. Changes within scientific disciplines, such as the rise of the Boasian school of anthropology in the United States contributed to this shift.

Many of the scientific studies that critics say support racism have been methodologically debunked by scientists with anti-racist agendas, such as Stephen Jay Gould. However, some scientists have accused Gould of misrepresenting the positions of those he engages, of being politically motivated in his attacks, and of being selective in his use of material to those ends.

Some scientists, such as Arthur Jensen and Richard Lynn, have argued that the threat of being labeled as a scientific racist has made the scientific study of race politically taboo, and has stifled true scientific discourse. These charges have surfaced most often during the study of intelligence, IQ, psychometrics and general intelligence factor. However, many scientists believe in the possible tautology that there is no evidence for typological notions of biological race, nor scientific justifications for racist beliefs.

Individual racial prejudice

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Racial prejudice refers to pre-formed opinions about individuals based on their perceived racial heritage. It involves generalizing about members of a group based on the perceived characteristics of one or more members of the group. Generalizations include beliefs that every member of a group has the same personality traits, interests, language, culture, ideas, norms and attitudes. Sometimes the characteristic is correct but the reason or cause is incorrectly assigned. Racial prejudices are sometimes promoted by the mainstream media.

Subtle and hidden racism

Elmar Holenstein uses the term crypto-racism as a synonym what he calls "hidden racism".

Some scholars use the term aversive racism to refer to the "subtle, unintentional form of bias that is presumed to characterize a substantial proportion of White liberals."

Because they have internalized liberal egalitarian values, aversive racists consider themselves non-prejudiced, even though they have unconscious racist feelings, and sometimes express them. "Thus, aversive racists are able to discriminate without acknowledging their prejudice because they excuse or justify their behaviour on ‘reasonable’ grounds” (ibid, 290).

Ideological racism

Racialism is a term often found within white separatist literature, inferring an emphasis on race in social matters. The term racism infers an assumption of racial superiority and harmful intent, whereas racial separatists sometimes prefer the term racialism, indicating a strong interest in matters of race without a necessary inference of superiority or a desire to be harmful to others. White separatists say their focus is on racial segregation and white pride.

Institutional racism

Institutional racism (also known as structural racism, state racism or systemic racism) is racial discrimination by governments, corporations, educational institutions or other large organizations with the power to influence the lives of many individuals. Stokely Carmichael is credited for coining the phrase institutional racism in the late 1960s. He defined the term as "the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin".

Economics and racism

Historical economic or social disparity is alleged to be a form of discrimination which is caused by past racism, affecting the present generation through deficits in the formal education and kinds of preparation in the parents' generation, and, through primarily unconscious racist attitudes and actions on members of the general population. (e.g. A member of race Y, Mary, has her opportunities adversely affected (directly and/or indirectly) by the mistreatment of her ancestors of race Y.)

Some scholars have suggested that capitalism has played a large role in promoting racism especially socioeconomic racism. The Western hemisphere slave trade and colonialist activities were mostly conducted by the earliest capitalist economies ie; Spain, Great Britain, the United States and the Netherlands. Critics have pointed out that a slave labor economy was the sometimes considered ultimate form of capitalism because the capitalists made pure profits because they used free labor.

Global apartheid is a phrase used by those who argue that the international economic and political system is racist and is designed so that a white minority internationally accrue more wealth and power and enjoy more human and legal rights than the non-white world majority.

Racism in sports

A conversation on April 15, 1987 between Nightline’s Ted Koppel and Al Campanis, who was an executive of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is one of the most publicized statements that exposed racism in sports:

Koppel: Why are there no black managers, general managers or owners?…Is there still prejudice in baseball today?
Campanis: No, I don’t believe it’s prejudice. I truly believe that they may not have some of the necessities to be, let’s say a field manager or perhaps a general manager.
Koppel: Do you really believe that?
Campanis: Well, I don’t say that all of them, but they certainly are shot. How many quarterbacks do you have, how many pitchers do you have, that are black?
Koppel: Yeah, but I got to tell you, that sounds like the same kind of garbage we were hearing 40 years ago about players.
Campanis: No, it’s not garbage, Mr. Koppel, because I played on a college team, and the center fielder was black, and in the backfield at NYU with a fullback who was black. Never knew the difference whether he was black or white. We were teammates. So it might just be, why are black men or black people not good swimmers? Because they don’t have the buoyancy.

The controversy was especially heated when it was pointed out that Campanis had participated in the decision over who would replace Walter Alston as the manager of the Dodgers. It had been a choice between the two coaches at the time, Tom Lasorda and Jim Gilliam, and it raised the question of whether Gilliam had been passed over because he was black.

The morning after the interview, public outrage started; Campanis resigned on April 18.

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Institutional racism by country

Australia

The policy of excluding all non-white people from the Australian continent was the official policy of all governments and all mainstream political parties in Australia from the 1890s to the 1950s, until the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 made the use of racial criteria for any official purpose illegal.

By official estimates, at least 100,000 the Aboriginal children were removed from their families by Australian government agencies and church missions between approximately 1900 and 1972.

India

Caste discrimination in India is often considered to be a form of racism.Critics of the analogy refute claims of equivalency between Caste and Racial discrimination, pointing out that the caste issues as essentially intra-racial and intra-cultural. The only reason India wants caste discrimination kept off the agenda of anti-racism is that it is a needless detraction from the issue of racism. Caste discrimination in India is undeniable but caste and race are entirely distinct.. Such allegations have also been rejected by many sociologists such as Andre Béteille, who writes that treating caste as a form of racism is "politically mischevious" and worse, "scientifically nonsense" since there is no discernable difference in the racial characteristics between Brahmins and Scheduled Castes. He writes that "Every social group cannot be regarded as a race simply because we want to protect it against prejudice and discrimination".

Based on the controversial Mandal commission report submitted in 1980, the Indian government decided to reserve 27% more seats for students from Other Backward Classes in all educational institutions (government and private), and bring the total Reservation percentage up to 50%. Subsequent surveys conducted by the Indian government indicated that population figures estimated by the Mandal commission based on 1931 census are exaggerated.

Certain Indian states, such as Tamil Nadu, reserve around 69% of the total seats in educational institutions and government jobs to students belonging to certain castes. In recent years, so-called upper castes were able to secure only 2.3 percent of total seats in professional education. A person born in a Backward Caste is eligible for reservation irrespective of their economic or social status. Many politicians, film stars, and rich industrialists also reap reservation benefits.Accusations have been made that the Indian parliament, has amended the constitution whenever a court judgement was not in favour of reservation decisions.

Israel

Critics of Israel claim that racism against Arabs is endemic and established in Israeli Jewish society, and that it is used to justify Israeli policies toward neighbouring states and the expulsion of the Arabs.

Some of those who defend Israel claim that Jewish society has given the Arabs in Israel many chances to become part of Israeli society but they have shown little interest in accepting the Jewish state. In an April 2003 interview with Daniel Pipes about Edward Said, Joe Scarborough accoused critics of Israel for echoing words that could come out of the mouth of Osama Bin Laden.

In a January 1989 article by Dr. Rafi Israeli, then a senior lecturer in Islamic civilization and Chinese history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explains that:

"They cannot be fully equal, not only because Israel is in a state of war with the Arab world but because they are, and increasingly so, identifying themselves as a national minority." ... "Therefore it is becoming more and more difficult for them to be fully equal because the basic beliefs, basic systems of values, norms and aspirations of Jews and Arabs are simply contradictory to theirs. They are on a collision course. Therefore all the thinking about the Arabs in Israel becoming good Israelis no longer holds true, especially since 1967. It is becoming more and more of a contradiction in terms to say "Israeli" Arabs; they may have an Israeli passport but they hardly identify with the State of Israel."

The Israeli Druze and Bedouin Arabs are the two minorities-within-a-minority whose relations with the State of Israel have historically been the most warm, both having had brethren who sided with and defended the Jewish state as early as 1947.

Israel's Declaration of Independence called for equal treatment under the law of all its citizens, regardless of their beliefs or national origin. Arab Israelis have had political representation since the state's first parliamentary assembly; currently, thirteen members of the Israeli Parliament are Arab-Israeli, most representing majority Arab political parties. An Arab-Israeli judge also sits on the Supreme Court.

Latin America

Latin America has a history of racism highly influenced by the colonial attitudes and devastation created by the Spanish conquest in the 16th and 17th centuries. During the conquest, the offspring of Spaniards and Native Americans became distinct and low caste in colonial society. The offspring are now the majority thougout Latin America and in Spanish-speaking countries they are called indios, nacos or mestizos by racists.

Europeans in Latin America during the colonial period intended mestizos to be a serf race to "pure" European colonial overlords in designated fiefdoms (often haciendas). A practical example of this practice can be found in the colonial government structure that required the top levels of government to be in the hands of European born individuals, called peninsulares. Middle management fell upon Europeans born in America without American blood, called criollos.

Those of mestizo blood were cast in the lowest echelon of society as miners and agricultural workers. However, mestizos with lighter complexion sometimes rose to higher positions. Latin America’s history of exploitation and feudal economic practices contributed to the popularity of Socialist and Communist movements in Latin America throughout the 20th century. The legacy of the fiefdoms is the reason why Latin America is constituted by so many small nations.

See the writings of Alvaro Vargas Llosa for discussion on relationships between development and culture in Latin America. Free trade agreements (like Mercosur) are challenging the need for borders among the nearly identical national cultures. Further, information technology and media consolidation is serving to further unify the Latin America's vast mestizo majority.

Malaysia

Malaysia has an official policy of race categorization and openly discriminates in favor of bumiputra Malays and against other races, especially ethnic Chinese and Indians. This discrimination includes education, business ownership and government employment. This policy is known as Ketuanan Melayu or Malay Supremacy.

South Africa

One of the best-known examples of racism as official government policy occurred in South Africa during the apartheid era. Apartheid was a system of racial segregation that was enforced from 1948 to 1994, with whites in a dominant political and social position.

Under apartheid, people were legally classified into a racial group - the main ones being white, black, Indian and coloured - and were forcibly, separated into different geographic areas based on their designated group. Education, medical care, and other public services were sometimes claimed to be separate but equal, but those available to non-white people were generally inferior.

Soviet Union

The Soviet government promoted the doctrine of assimilating all peoples living in USSR into new formation they called the Soviet people. The Russification efforts by the Soviet authorities met resistance in many localities. The infamous "fifth record" (Template:Lang-ru, pyataya grafa) was the section of the obligatory internal passport document which stated the citizen's ethnicity, and in some cases, ethnic background or national identification served as a basis for discrimination.

Under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, the USSR practiced forced resettlement of a number of ethnic groups to new locations, usually with great loss of life. Among them were Poles (1934), Koreans (1937), Romanians (1939-1941 and 1944-1953) Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians (1940-1941 and 1945-1949), Volga Germans (1941), Balkars, Chechens, Ingushs (1944), Kalmyks (1944), Meskhetian Turks (1944), Crimean Tatars (1944).

Uganda

In the 1970s, Ugandan President Idi Amin expelled tens of thousands of ethnic Indians. On August 4, 1972, Amin gave Uganda's 50,000 Asians (mostly Indians of Gujarati origin) 90 days to leave the country, following an alleged dream in which, he claimed that God told him to expel them. Their expulsion resulted in a significant decline in Uganda's Hindu and Muslim population.

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United States

The practice of racist Jim Crow laws by Southern states was common until the 1964 Civil Rights Act gave the Federal government more enforcement power.

During World War II, people of Japanese ancestry who were living on the west coast of the U.S. were imprisoned in internment camps. Also, during the period of WWII, no Asians, including the Chinese, who were their allies; were allowed into the US, just because they "looked like the enemy". Another example of racism was when the Chinese worked on the transcontinental railroad in the 1860's. They were paid five dollars lower than Americans were paid and had to pay for their own food because they weren't white.

Other examples of racism in U.S. domestic policy included human experimentation without consent, the most famous case being the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in which Black males infected with syphilis were purposefully not treated in order to study the long-term effects of the disease. The political status of African Americans was expressed by Abraham Lincoln, “…I am not nor ever have been in favour of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people…"

Some critics, including Gore Vidal, British MP George Galloway and Ward Churchill, have suggested that British and United States foreign policy in the Middle East is racist. George Galloway has also claimed that Arabs in the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp, Iraqis in the Abu Ghraib prison and other jails, and civilians in Iraq, are not being treated as human beings by the United States.

Racial profiling of minorities by law enforcement officials is considered by some people to be a form of racism. Some claim that profiling young Arab males at airports will only lead to increased recruitment by terrorists of old non-Arab females, as well as Arab males who can "pass" as a non-Arab. Some state that this profiling is unnecessary, as it brings about the mistrust of many people. Some critics claim that racial profiling of citizens in the United States is an unconstitutional practice because the government is infringing upon an individual's freedom just on the basis of what a racial group is believed to be more likely to do (in this case, commit terrorism).

French philosopher Michel Foucault argued in Discipline and Punish (1975) that such profiling shifts the emphasis from the act itself (the crime) to the person (the "criminal"), and that a general tendency of "disciplinary societies" is to create the psychological category of "delinquent".

Racism against Native Americans

The Native Americans have faced racism in the United States since the days of Colonial America. Indeed, in 1606, Marc Lescarbot's "The Theatre of Neptune in New France" cast First nations as "Savages" who offer their complete subordination to the colonial masters. While the "Savages" were played by Frenchmen, the audience was composed of people from the Mi'kmaq Nation, setting a disturbing precedent.

The Native Americans were massacred by US forces in the 19th century, which some claim was genocide . US President Andrew Jackson was quoted as saying that" the only good Indian is a dead Indian" . Native Americans continue to face struggles. The Shoshone nation has accused the US government of racism for testing nuclear weapons close to their tribal lands. . .

Slavery in the United States

Contention over the morality and legality of the institution of slavery was one of the cardinal issues which led to the American Civil War. The failed attempt at secession by the Southern United States led to the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which was the official end of legal slavery in the United States.

Emancipated blacks in the United States still had to struggle against institutional racism, forced segregation, violation of voting rights, and even terrorism. The Ku Klux Klan is the best-known of the organizations espousing racist ideologies and enforcing discriminatory cultural norms with murderous violence or the threat of it.

Racism against Japanese and Italian Americans during World War II

During the second world war, over 100,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians were forcibly placed in concentration camps where they remained until the end of hostilities with Japan . The incident that triggered the surge of anti-Japanese racism was the Japanese Imperial Navy's attack on Pearl Harbor similar to how the events of 9/11 triggered a backlash against Arabs, Iranians and Muslims. Racism differs from country to country.

Tens of thousands of Italian Americans were put in internment camps during World War II as well. Thousands more were placed under surveillence or had their property repossessed by the government. Joe DiMaggio's father, who lived in San Francisco, had his boat and house confiscated. One official stated that if it had not been for Joe DiMaggio's status as a baseball player, his father would most likely had been sent to an internment camp.

One of the Trade Union Practices in the UK

A member of a trade union making a complaint of workplace harassment against a fellow employee and member of the same union is not entitled to union advice and assistance, irrespective of the merit of the case, because the employee complained against could lose his/her job. In the Weaver v NATFHE race discrimination case, the Tribunal decided that the union’s principal obligation in race harassment cases is to protect the tenure of the accused employee. The Employment Appeal Tribunal upheld the decision and extended the decision to cover complaints of sexist harassment.

History of racism

Related article: Racism by country.

The early modern discourse of race struggle

Although anti-Semitism has a long European history, racism itself is frequently described as a modern phenomenon. In the view of the French intellectual Michel Foucault, the first formulation of racism emerged in the Early Modern period as the "discourse of race struggle", a historical and political discourse which Foucault opposed to the philosophical and juridical discourse of sovereignty.

According to Foucault, this first appearance of racism as a theoretical discourse (as opposed to simple xenophobia, which some might argue has existed in all places and times) may be found during the 1688 Glorious Revolution in Great Britain, in Edward Coke or John Lilburne's work.

However, this "discourse of race struggle", as interpreted by Foucault, must be distinguished from 19th century biological racism, also known as race science or scientific racism. Indeed, this early modern discourse has many points of difference with modern racism. First of all, in this "discourse of race struggle", "race" is not considered a biological notion — which would divide humanity into biological groups — but as a historical notion. Moreover, this discourse is opposed to the sovereign's discourse: it is used by the bourgeoisie, the people and the aristocracy as a mean of struggle against the monarchy.

This discourse, which first appeared in Great Britain, was then carried on in France by people such as Boulainvilliers, Nicolas Fréret, and then, during the French Revolution, Sieyès, and afterward Augustin Thierry and Cournot. Boulainvilliers, which created the matrix of such racist discourse in medieval France, conceived the "race" as something closer to the sense of "nation", that is, in his times, "people".

He conceived France as divided between various nations — the unified nation-state is, of course, here an anachronism — which themselves formed different "races". Boulainvilliers opposed the absolute monarchy, who tried to bypass the aristocracy by establishing a direct relationship to the Third Estate. Thus, he created this theory of the French aristocrats as being the descendants of foreign invaders, whom he called the "Franks", while the Third Estate constituted according to him the autochthonous, vanquished Gallo-Romans, who were dominated by the Frankish aristocracy as a consequence of the right of conquest.

Early modern racism was opposed to nationalism and the nation-state: the Comte de Montlosier, in exile during the French Revolution, who borrowed Boulainvilliers' discourse on the "Nordic race" as being the French aristocracy that invaded the plebeian "Gauls", thus showed his despise for the Third Estate calling it "this new people born of slaves... mixture of all races and of all times".

While 19th century racism is related to nationalism (some authors have opposed a "close nationalism", based on racism, etc., towards an "open nationalism", based on the universalist conception of the nation, etc.), medieval racism precisely divides the nation into various non-biological "races", which are the consequences of historical conquests and social conflicts.

19th century transformation of medieval discourse

Michel Foucault thus traces the genealogy of modern racism to this medieval "historical and political discourse of race struggle". According to him, it divided itself in the 19th century according to two rival lines: on one hand, it was incorporated by racists, biologists and eugenicists, who gave it the modern sense of "race" and, even more, transformed this popular discourse into a "state racism" (Nazism).

On the other hand, Marxists also seized this discourse, transforming the essentialist notion of "race" into the historical notion of "class struggle", defined by socially structured position: capitalist or proletarian.

Thus, biological racism was invented in the 19th century. Arthur de Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-55) may be considered as one of the first theorizations of this new racism, founded on an essentialist notion of race, and which would progressively tie itself to nationalism and to the state, creating this new form of nationalism which appeared in the New Imperialism period, and in France, in the midst of the Dreyfus Affair.

Hannah Arendt has shown in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) the emergence of "continental imperialisms", i.e. pan-Germanism and pan-Slavism, both racist ideologies which would play a decisive role after the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.

Other famous authors include Edouard Drumont, an anti-Semitic French author; Vacher de Lapouge's "anthroposociology"; Herder, who applied race to nationalist theory to develop militant ethnic nationalism; H.S. Chamberlain at the end of the 19th century (a British citizen who naturalized himself as German because of his admiration for the "Aryan race"); Madison Grant, a eugenicist and author of The Passing of the Great Race (1916).

Such authors posited the historical existence of national races such as German and French, branching from basal races supposed to have existed for millennia, such as the Aryan race, and believed political boundaries should mirror these supposed racial ones.

Ethnic conflicts

Debates over the origins of racism often suffer from a lack of clarity over the term. Many use the term "racism" to refer to more general phenomena, such as xenophobia and ethnocentrism, although scholars attempt to clearly distinguish those phenomena from racism as an ideology or from scientific racism, which has little to do with ordinary xenophobia.

Others conflate recent forms of racism with earlier forms of ethnic and national conflict. In most cases, ethno-national conflict seems to owe to conflict over land and strategic resources. In some cases ethnicity and nationalism were harnessed to rally combatants in wars between great religious empires (for example, the Muslim Turks and the Catholic Austro-Hungarians).

Notions of race and racism often have played central roles in such ethnic conflicts. Historically, when an adversary is identified as "other" based on notions of race or ethnicity (particularly when "other" is construed to mean "inferior"), the means employed by the self-presumed "superior" party to appropriate territory, human chattel, or material wealth often have been more ruthless, more brutal, and less constrained by moral or ethical considerations.

One example of the brutalizing and dehumanizing effects of racism was the attempt to deliberately infect Native Americans with smallpox during Pontiac's Rebellion in 1763, itself a war intended to ethnically cleanse the "other" (European Americans) from Native American land.

According to historian Daniel Richter, Pontiac's Rebellion saw the emergence on both sides of the conflict of "the novel idea that all Native people were 'Indians,' that all Euro-Americans were 'Whites,' and that all on one side must unite to destroy the other." (Richter, Facing East from Indian Country, p. 208)

In the Western world, racism evolved, twinned with the doctrine of white supremacy, and helped fuel the European exploration, conquest, and colonization of much of the rest of the world -- especially after Christopher Columbus reached the Americas. Basil Davidson insists in his documentary, Africa: Different but Equal, that racism, in fact, only just recently surfaced—as late as the 1800s, due to the need for a justification of slavery in the Americas. The idea of slavery as an "equal-opportunity employer" was denounced with the introduction of Christian theory in the West.

Maintaining that Africans were "subhuman" was the only loophole in the then accepted law that "men are created equal" that would allow for the sustenance of the Triangular Trade. New peoples in the Americas, possible slaves, were encountered, fought, and ultimately subdued, but then due to western diseases, their population decreased innumerably.

Through both influences, theories about "race" developed, and these helped many to justify the differences in position and treatment of people whom they categorized as belonging to different races (see Eric Wolf's Europe and the People without History).

Some people, like Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, have argued during the Valladolid controversy in the middle of the 16th century that the Native Americans were natural slaves because they had no souls. In Asia, the Chinese and Japanese Empires were both strong colonial powers, with the Chinese making colonies and vassal states of much of East Asia throughout history, and the Japanese doing the same in the 19th-20th centuries. In both cases, the Asian imperial powers believed they were ethnically and racially preferenced too.

European colonialism

Authors such as Hannah Arendt, in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, have pointed out how the racist ideology ("popular racism") developed at the end of the 19th century helped legitimize the imperialist conquests of foreign territories, and the crimes that accompanied it (such as the Herero and Namaqua Genocide, 1904-1907).

Auguste Comte's positivist ideology of necessary social progress as a consequence of scientific progress lead many Europeans to believe in the inherent superiority of the "White Race" over non-whites.

Rudyard Kipling's poem on The White Man's Burden (1899) is one of the most famous illustrations of such belief, though also thought to be a satirical vantage of such imperialism. Racist ideology thus helped legitimize subjugation, slavery and the dismantling of the traditional societies of indigenous peoples, which were thus conceived as humanitarian obligations as a result of these racist rationalizations.

Other colonialists recognized the depravity of their actions but persisted for personal gain and there are some Europeans during the time period who objected to the injustices caused by colonialism and lobbied on behalf of aboriginal peoples. Thus, when the so-called "Hottentot Venus" was displayed in England in the beginning of the 19th century, the African Association publicly opposed itself to this shameful exhibition. The same year that Kipling published his poem, Joseph Conrad published Heart of Darkness (1899), a clear criticism of the Congo Free State owned by Leopold II of Belgium.

Human zoos were an important means of bolstering popular racism by connecting it to scientific racism: they were both objects of public curiosity and of anthropology and anthropometry. Joice Heth, an African American slave, was displayed by P.T. Barnum in 1836, a few years after the exhibition of Saartjie Baartman, the "Hottentot Venus", in England. Such exhibitions became common in the New Imperialism period, and remained so until World War II.

Congolese pygmy Ota Benga was displayed in 1906 by eugenicist Madison Grant, head of the Bronx Zoo, as an attempt to illustrate the "missing link" between humans and orangutans: thus, racism was tied to Darwinism, creating a social Darwinism ideology which tried to ground itself in Darwin's scientific discoveries. The 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition displayed Kanaks from New Caledonia. A "Congolese village" was on display as late as 1958 at the Brussels' World Fair.

Nazism, Fascism and Shôwa imperialism

Main articles : The Holocaust, Nazi eugenics, Concentration camps, German war crimes, Japanese war crimes, Eugenics in Imperial Japan, Ethnic issues in Japan

State racism played a role in the Nazi Germany regime and Fascist regimes in Europe, and in the first part of Japan's Showa period. These governments advocated and implemented policies that were racist, xenophobic and, in case of nazism, genocidal.

Racism against specific groups

Racism against Middle Easterners

There are reports of a large increase in anti-Arab/anti-Iranian racism in the United States since the September 11 2001 attacks. Racial profiling of people with a Middle Eastern ethnic background was proposed by a New York Congressman on August 15, 2006.

In movies and jokes, Arabs and Iranians have been shown as being terrorists and barbarians, or as inferior people. Iraq and Iran were demonized which led to hatred towards Arabs and Iranians living in the United States and elsewere in the western world. There have been attacks against Arabs and Iranians not only on the basis of their religion (Islam), but also on the basis of their ethnicity; numerous Christian Arabs and Iranians have been attacked based on their appearance.

Racism against Jews

Antisemitism is a specific case of racism targeting Jews, although scholars argue whether it should be considered a sui generis specie or not.

Scholars distinguish traditional, religious antisemitism, which derives from Christian accusation of the deicide (cleared at the Second Vatican Council in 1965), with 19th-20th centuries racial antisemitism, which ultimately led to the Holocaust in which about 6 million European Jews, 1.5 million of them children, were systematically murdered. See also Holocaust denial.

In the Middle Ages Iberian peninsula, the system of limpieza de sangre (cleanliness of blood) ostracized New Christians (offspring of Sephardic Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism) from the rest of society. In Portugal, the legal distinction between New and Old Christians was ended in 1772.

Expelled en masse from England, France, Spain and most other Western European countries at various times, and persecuted in Germany in the 14th century, many Jews accepted Casimir III's invitation to settle in Polish-controlled areas of Eastern Europe. The traditional measures of keeping the Russian Empire free of Jews failed when the main territory of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was annexed during the Partitions of Poland. As large Jewish populations were taken over by Russia, Catherine II established the Pale of Settlement in 1791. The official segregation of the Russian Jews was compounded by waves of pogroms and oppressive legislation such as the 1882 May Laws and led to mass emigration and political activism.

Modern European antisemitism has its origin in 19th century pseudo-scientific theories that viewed the Jewish people as entirely different from the Aryan, or Indo-European, populations. In this view, Jews are not opposed on account of their religion, but on account of their supposed hereditary or genetic racial characteristics. The growth of nationalism in many countries viewed Jews as a separate and often "alien" nation within the countries in which Jews resided. Such sentiments were exposed in the Dreyfus affair in 1890s France. See also Rootless cosmopolitanism.

The rise of views of Jews as a malevolent "race" generated antisemitic conspiracy theories that Jews, as a group, were plotting to control or otherwise influence the world. From the early infamous Russian literary hoax, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, published by the Tsar's secret police, a key element of antisemitic thought has been that Jews influence or control the world.

In a recent incarnation, extremist groups, such as Neo-Nazi parties and Islamist groups, claim that the aim of Zionism is global domination; they call this the Zionist conspiracy and use it to support antisemitism. This position is associated with fascism and Nazism, though it is becoming a tendency within parts of the Left as well, and termed New antisemitism.

Religion and Racism

See Christianity and Slavery and Islam and Slavery

In the 19th century, many American Christians were taught that Africans, were descendents of Ham, and thus deserved to be slaves. However, abolition movements also used Christian teachings in explaining their views.

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Reverse racism

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Racism" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Reverse racism is a term used to describe attitudes, behaviors, and policies which are racially discriminatory in a manner which is contrary to a historical pattern of racial discrimination. Usually a historically sociopolitically non-dominant race is perceived to benefit at the expense of a historically sociopolitically dominant race.

Affirmative action (sometimes called positive discrimination outside the U.S.) is a government policy or a program of giving preferences to members of particular social groups, including races. Opponents contend that such preferential treatment by the government is a form of institutionalized reverse racism which unfairly discriminates against individuals by racial category. Proponents contend that such preferential treatment promotes racial integration and economic equality of groups which have been affected by racism.

Many opponents of the term reverse racism claim that use of the term is pejorative, racist, and no different than any other form of racism. Some believe the term to be used almost exclusively against their own racial group, implying that only members of their race are capable of being racists. Many opponents of the concept say that racism is by definition exclusively of the race in power.

A more literal and modern interpretation of the term "reverse racism" refers to the idea of projecting racial bias onto another person's behavior that does not pertain to their own race. For example, saying that a white person who dresses and talks like an African American rap artist is acting black, is an example of reverse racism. It does not show racial bias against the person in question, but perpetuates racial roles with the sentiment that races are expected to act or dress a specific way.

Another example is to automatically assume that one or both members of an interracial couple have a race fetish for their significant other's race, rather than assuming the relationship is based on other factors. This is reverse racism due to the projection of a possibly false racial bias onto another person.

See also

• List of racism-related topics

References

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2. "Document equating ethnocentrism with racism".
3. "Document equating views against miscegenation with racism".
4. ^ Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America (Modified from 1989 Bantam Classic text ed.). Charlottesville: New Left Review. 1990 . Retrieved 1990-06-22. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) Cite error: The named reference "DuBois" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
5. Molefi Asante., ed. (2003) . Erasing Racism: The Survival of the American Nation (Hardback ed.). USA: Prometheus Books. Retrieved 2003. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
6. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/272550_race02.html
7. Objectivist Newsletter. An article published in the September, 1963 issue of The Objectivist Newsletter and included as a chapter in the book, The Virtue of Selfishness ). 1963 . {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); line feed character in |publisher= at position 81 (help)
8. http://europa.eu.int/comm/justice_home/fsj/rights/discrimination/printer/fsj_rights_discrim_en.htm
9. The Removal of Agency from Africa by Owen 'Alik Shahadah
10. http://www.harunyahya.com/c_refutation_darwinism.php
11. "Document describing crypto-racism as hidden racism". A Dozen Rules of Thumb for Avoiding Intercultural Misunderstandings. Forum For Intercultural Philosophy.
12. Leanne S. Son Hing, Greg A. Chung-Yan, Robert Grunfeld, Lori K. Robichaud, and Mark P. Zanna. "Exploring the Discrepancy Between Implicit and Explicit Prejudice: A Test of Aversive Racism Theory" in Social Motivation: Conscious and Unconscious Processes. Joseph P. Forgas, Kipling D. Williams, Simon M. Laham, eds. Cambridge University Press. 2004.
13. Richard W. Race, Analysing ethnic education policy-making in England and Wales (PDF), Sheffield Online Papers in Social Research, University of Sheffield, p.12. Accessed 20 June 2006.
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15. http://.race.eserver.org/toward-a-theory-of-racism.htm
16. http://.flag.blackened.net/revolt/talks/racism.html
17. Shropshire, Kenneth L. In Black and White: Race and Sports in America. New York: NYU, 1996.
18. {{http://www.immi.gov.au/facts/08abolition.htm Abolition of the 'White Australia' Policy] (Australian Department of Immigration)
19. "Bringing them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families"
20. An Untouchable Subject?
21. Discrimination that must be cast away,The Hindu
22. http://www.southasianmedia.net/cnn.cfm?id=292238&category=Social%20Sectors&Country=INDIA
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25. http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/05/18/stories/2006051800251000.htm][http://en.wikipedia.org/Reservation_in_India#Caste_Based_Reservations_in_Tamil_Nadu
26. http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=72900
27. (aljazeera)
28. (wrmea)
29. (zmag)
30. Columbia University Celebrates Edward Said (MSNBC: Scarborough Country) April 16, 2003]
31. [http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/mfaarchive/1990_1999/1999/7/the%20bedouin%20in%20israel The Bedouin in Israel] by Yosef Ben-David. (Israel MFA) July 1999
32. Between success and the search for identity by Suzanna Kokkonen (WZO)
33. Freedom House. Country Report. Israel 2006 Edition
34. Wu, Min Aun & Hickling, R. H. (2003). Hickling's Malaysian Public Law, p. 19. Petaling Jaya: Pearson Malaysia. ISBN 983-74-2518-0.
35. http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/west/series2/ugandan_asians.shtml
36. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+ug0054)
37. Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended (1976-77)
38. On A Neglected Aspect Of Western Racism, Kurt Jonassohn, December 2000
39. "Human zoos - Racist theme parks for Europe's colonialists". Le Monde Diplomatique. August 2000. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help) Template:En icon; "Ces zoos humains de la République coloniale". Le Monde diplomatique. August 2000. Template:Fr icon (available to everyone)
40. The Colonial Exhibition of May 1931 (PDF) by Michael G. Vann, History Dept., Santa Clara University, USA
41. Edward Russel of Liverpool, The Knights of Bushido, 2002, p.238, Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the making of modern Japan, 2001, p.313, 314, 326, 359, 360, Karel Wolferen, The Enigma of Japanese power, 1989, p.263-272
42. http://www.religionlink.org/tip_030407b.php
43. http://www.adc.org/index.php?id=2930
44. http://www.adc.org/index.php?id=2357
45. http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/13/2004/814
46. http://www.soundvision.com/info/peace/demonization.asp
47. Attacks on Arab Americans (PBS)
48. Antiglobalism's Jewish Problem by Mark Strauss (Foreign Policy) 12 November 2003
49. Human Rights and the New Anti-Jewishness By Irwin Cotler (FrontPageMagazine.com) February 16, 2004
50. This definition is, for example, used by the National Associatio of School Psychologists, which says that: "The critical element of racism which differentiates racism from prejudice and discrimination is the use of institutional power and authority to support prejudice and enforce discriminatory behaviors in systematic ways with far reaching outcomes and effects."

Bibliography

• Barkan, Elazar (1992), The Retreat of Scientific Racism : Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States between the World Wars, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY.

• Dain, Bruce (2002), A Hideous Monster of the Mind : American Race Theory in the Early Republic, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. (18th century US racial theory)

• Diamond, Jared (1999), "Guns, Germs, and Steel", W.W. Norton, New York, NY.

• Ewen & Ewen (2006), "Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality", Seven Stories Press, New York, NY.

• Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1952), Race and History, (UNESCO).

• Rocchio, Vincent F. (2000), Reel Racism : Confronting Hollywood's Construction of Afro-American Culture, Westview Press.

• Stokes, DaShanne (forthcoming), Legalized Segregation and the Denial of Religious Freedom, URL.

• Stoler, Ann Laura (1997), "Racial Histories and Their Regimes of Truth", Political Power and Social Theory 11 (1997), 183–206. (historiography of race and racism)

• Taguieff, Pierre-André (1987), La Force du préjugé : Essai sur le racisme et ses doubles, Tel Gallimard, La Découverte.

• Twine, France Winddance (1997), Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil, Rutgers University Press.

External links

• Understanding race website with pegagogic materials for both students and teachers, including sections for children (ages 10-13) and academic researchers. Emphasis on the United States.
• Does race exist? argument for the biological concept of race
• Does race exist? argument against the existence of race as a biological entity
• Race in-depth website about race
• Race - the power of illusion argument that while race is a biological fiction, racism permeates the structure of society
• Race Denial: The Power of a Delusion detailed critique seeking to refute the film
• Racism and human rights Racism from Global Issues
• Institute for Race Relations
• Eagle feather law details racism in religion law regarding eagle feathers for Native and non-Native Americans
• The Mis-portrayal of Darwin as a Racist Refutes claims that Darwin was a racist
• Racism brief summary of the root causes of racism
• InterculturalU.com - a scholarly site that covers racism and other related topics.
• Buckfastforbreakfast A look at racial stereotyping within the WWE wrestling company.

• Articles with unsourced statements from January 2007
• Core issues in ethics
• Discrimination
• Politics and race
• Racism
• Sociology
• Pejorative terms for people