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Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice,
discrimination Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, relig ...
, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or
ethnicity An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
. Modern variants of racism are often based in social perceptions of biological differences between peoples. These views can take the form of social actions, practices or beliefs, or political systems in which different races are ranked as inherently superior or inferior to each other, based on presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities. There have been attempts to legitimize racist beliefs through scientific means, such as scientific racism, which have been overwhelmingly shown to be unfounded. In terms of political systems (e.g. apartheid) that support the expression of prejudice or aversion in discriminatory practices or laws, racist ideology may include associated social aspects such as nativism, xenophobia, otherness, segregation,
hierarchical A hierarchy (from Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important ...
ranking, and
supremacism Supremacism is the belief that a certain group of people is superior to all others. The supposed superior people can be defined by age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, language, social class, ideology, nation, culture, ...
. While the concepts of race and ethnicity are considered to be separate in contemporary social science, the two terms have a long history of equivalence in popular usage and older social science literature. "Ethnicity" is often used in a sense close to one traditionally attributed to "race", the division of human groups based on qualities assumed to be essential or innate to the group (e.g. shared
ancestry An ancestor, also known as a forefather, fore-elder or a forebear, is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent and so forth). ''Ancestor'' is "any person from whom ...
or shared behavior). ''Racism'' and '' racial discrimination'' are often used to describe discrimination on an ethnic or cultural basis, independent of whether these differences are described as racial. According to the United Nations's Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, there is no distinction between the terms "racial" and "ethnic" discrimination. It further concludes that superiority based on racial differentiation is scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially
unjust Injustice is a quality relating to unfairness or undeserved outcomes. The term may be applied in reference to a particular event or situation, or to a larger status quo. In Western philosophy and jurisprudence, injustice is very commonly—but n ...
, and dangerous. The convention also declared that there is no justification for racial discrimination, anywhere, in theory or in practice. Racism is a relatively modern concept, arising in the European age of imperialism, the subsequent growth of capitalism, and especially the
Atlantic slave trade The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...
, of which it was a major driving force. It was also a major force behind
racial segregation in the United States In the United States, racial segregation is the systematic separation of facilities and services such as Housing in the United States, housing, Healthcare in the United States, healthcare, Education in the United States, education, Employment in ...
in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and of apartheid in South Africa; 19th and 20th-century racism in Western culture is particularly well documented and constitutes a reference point in studies and discourses about racism. Racism has played a role in genocides such as the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, and the Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia, as well as colonial projects including the European colonization of
the Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America, North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. ...
, Africa, Asia, and the
population transfer in the Soviet Union From 1930 to 1952, the government of the Soviet Union, on the orders of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin under the direction of the NKVD official Lavrentiy Beria, forcibly transferred populations of various groups. These actions may be classified ...
including deportations of indigenous minorities. Indigenous peoples have been—and are—often subject to racist attitudes.


Etymology, definition, and usage

In the 19th century, many scientists subscribed to the belief that the human population can be divided into races. The term ''racism'' is a noun describing the state of being racist, i.e., subscribing to the belief that the human population can or should be classified into races with differential abilities and dispositions, which in turn may motivate a political ideology in which rights and privileges are differentially distributed based on racial categories. The term "racist" may be an adjective or a noun, the latter describing a person who holds those beliefs. The origin of the root word "race" is not clear. Linguists generally agree that it came to the English language from Middle French, but there is no such agreement on how it generally came into Latin-based languages. A recent proposal is that it derives from the Arabic ''ra's'', which means "head, beginning, origin" or the Hebrew ''rosh'', which has a similar meaning. Early race theorists generally held the view that some races were inferior to others and they consequently believed that the differential treatment of races was fully justified. These early theories guided pseudo-scientific research assumptions; the collective endeavors to adequately define and form hypotheses about racial differences are generally termed scientific racism, though this term is a misnomer, due to the lack of any actual science backing the claims. Most
biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual cell, a multicellular organism, or a community of interacting populations. They usually specialize in ...
s, anthropologists, and sociologists reject a taxonomy of races in favor of more specific and/or empirically verifiable criteria, such as geography, ethnicity, or a history of endogamy. Human genome research indicates that race is not a meaningful genetic classification of humans. An entry in the '' Oxford English Dictionary'' (2008) defines racialism as " earlier term than racism, but now largely superseded by it", and cites the term "racialism" in a 1902 quote. The revised ''Oxford English Dictionary'' cites the shorter term "racism" in a quote from the year 1903. It was defined by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (2nd edition 1989) as " e theory that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are determined by race"; the same dictionary termed ''racism'' a
synonym A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...
of ''racialism'': "belief in the superiority of a particular race". By the end of World War II, ''racism'' had acquired the same supremacist connotations formerly associated with ''racialism'': ''racism'' by then implied racial
discrimination Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, relig ...
, racial
supremacism Supremacism is the belief that a certain group of people is superior to all others. The supposed superior people can be defined by age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, language, social class, ideology, nation, culture, ...
, and a harmful intent. The term "race hatred" had also been used by sociologist Frederick Hertz in the late 1920s. As its history indicates, the popular use of the word ''racism'' is relatively recent. The word came into widespread usage in the Western world in the 1930s, when it was used to describe the social and political ideology of Nazism, which treated "race" as a naturally given political unit. It is commonly agreed that racism existed before the coinage of the word, but there is not a wide agreement on a single definition of what racism is and what it is not. Today, some scholars of racism prefer to use the concept in the plural ''racisms'', in order to emphasize its many different forms that do not easily fall under a single definition. They also argue that different forms of racism have characterized different historical periods and geographical areas. Garner (2009: p. 11) summarizes different existing definitions of racism and identifies three common elements contained in those definitions of racism. First, a historical, hierarchical power relationship between groups; second, a set of ideas (an ideology) about racial differences; and, third, discriminatory actions (practices).


Legal

Though many countries around the globe have passed laws related to race and discrimination, the first significant international human rights instrument developed by the United Nations (UN) was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. The UDHR recognizes that if people are to be treated with dignity, they require economic rights, social rights including education, and the rights to
cultural Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human Society, societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, and habits of the ...
and political participation and civil liberty. It further states that everyone is entitled to these rights "without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status". The UN does not define "racism"; however, it does define "racial discrimination". According to the 1965 UN International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,
The term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that 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.
In their 1978 United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice (Article 1), the UN states, "All human beings belong to a single species and are descended from a common stock. They are born equal in dignity and rights and all form an integral part of humanity." The UN definition of racial discrimination does not make any distinction between discrimination based on ethnicity and race, in part because the distinction between the two has been a matter of debate among academics, including anthropologists. Similarly, in British law, the phrase ''racial group'' means "any group of people who are defined by reference to their race, colour, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origin". In Norway, the word "race" has been removed from national laws concerning discrimination because the use of the phrase is considered problematic and unethical. The Norwegian Anti-Discrimination Act bans discrimination based on ethnicity, national origin, descent, and skin color.


Social and behavioral sciences

Sociologists, in general, recognize "race" as a social construct. This means that, although the concepts of race and racism are based on observable biological characteristics, any conclusions drawn about race on the basis of those observations are heavily influenced by cultural ideologies. Racism, as an ideology, exists in a society at both the individual and institutional level. While much of the research and work on racism during the last half-century or so has concentrated on "white racism" in the Western world, historical accounts of race-based social practices can be found across the globe.Gossett, Thomas F. ''Race: The History of an Idea in America''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Thus, racism can be broadly defined to encompass individual and group prejudices and acts of discrimination that result in material and cultural advantages conferred on a majority or a dominant social group. So-called "white racism" focuses on societies in which white populations are the majority or the dominant social group. In studies of these majority white societies, the aggregate of material and cultural advantages is usually termed " white privilege". Race and race relations are prominent areas of study in sociology and economics. Much of the sociological literature focuses on white racism. Some of the earliest sociological works on racism were penned by sociologist
W. E. B. Du Bois William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American-Ghanaian sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in ...
, the first African American to earn a doctoral degree from Harvard University. Du Bois wrote, " e problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line." Wellman (1993) defines racism as "culturally sanctioned beliefs, which, regardless of intentions involved, defend the advantages whites have because of the subordinated position of racial minorities". In both sociology and economics, the outcomes of racist actions are often measured by the inequality in income, wealth,
net worth Net worth is the value of all the non-financial and financial assets owned by an individual or institution minus the value of all its outstanding liabilities. Since financial assets minus outstanding liabilities equal net financial assets, net ...
, and access to other cultural resources (such as education), between racial groups. In sociology and social psychology,
racial identity A race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society. The term came into common usage during the 1500s, when it was used to refer to groups of variou ...
and the acquisition of that identity, is often used as a variable in racism studies. Racial ideologies and racial identity affect individuals' perception of race and discrimination. Cazenave and Maddern (1999) define racism as "a highly organized system of 'race'-based group privilege that operates at every level of society and is held together by a sophisticated ideology of color/'race' supremacy. Racial centrality (the extent to which a culture recognizes individuals' racial identity) appears to affect the degree of discrimination African-American young adults perceive whereas racial ideology may buffer the detrimental emotional effects of that discrimination." Sellers and Shelton (2003) found that a relationship between racial discrimination and emotional distress was moderated by racial ideology and social beliefs. Some sociologists also argue that, particularly in the West, where racism is often negatively sanctioned in society, racism has changed from being a blatant to a more covert expression of racial prejudice. The "newer" (more hidden and less easily detectable) forms of racism—which can be considered embedded in social processes and structures—are more difficult to explore and challenge. It has been suggested that, while in many countries overt or explicit racism has become increasingly taboo, even among those who display egalitarian explicit attitudes, an
implicit Implicit may refer to: Mathematics * Implicit function * Implicit function theorem * Implicit curve * Implicit surface * Implicit differential equation Other uses * Implicit assumption, in logic * Implicit-association test, in social psychology ...
or
aversive racism Aversive racism is a theory proposed by Samuel L. Gaertner & John F. Dovidio (1986), according to which negative evaluations of racial/ethnic minorities are realized by a persistent avoidance of interaction with other racial and ethnic groups. As ...
is still maintained subconsciously. This process has been studied extensively in social psychology as implicit associations and implicit attitudes, a component of implicit cognition. Implicit attitudes are evaluations that occur without conscious awareness towards an attitude object or the self. These evaluations are generally either favorable or unfavorable. They come about from various influences in the individual experience. Implicit attitudes are not consciously identified (or they are inaccurately identified) traces of past experience that mediate favorable or unfavorable feelings, thoughts, or actions towards social objects. These feelings, thoughts, or actions have an influence on behavior of which the individual may not be aware. Therefore, subconscious racism can influence our visual processing and how our minds work when we are subliminally exposed to faces of different colors. In thinking about crime, for example, social psychologist
Jennifer L. Eberhardt Jennifer Lynn Eberhardt (born 1965) is an American social psychologist who is currently a professor in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. Eberhardt has been responsible for major contributions on investigating the consequences ...
(2004) of
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
holds that, "blackness is so associated with crime you're ready to pick out these crime objects." Such exposures influence our minds and they can cause subconscious racism in our behavior towards other people or even towards objects. Thus, racist thoughts and actions can arise from stereotypes and fears of which we are not aware. For example, scientists and activists have warned that the use of the stereotype "Nigerian Prince" for referring to
advance-fee scam An advance-fee scam is a form of fraud and is one of the most common types of confidence tricks. The scam typically involves promising the victim a significant share of a large sum of money, in return for a small up-front payment, which the frauds ...
mers is racist, i.e. "reducing Nigeria to a nation of scammers and fraudulent princes, as some people still do online, is a
stereotype In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...
that needs to be called out".


Humanities

Language, linguistics, and
discourse Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. ...
are active areas of study in the humanities, along with literature and the arts. Discourse analysis seeks to reveal the meaning of race and the actions of racists through careful study of the ways in which these factors of human society are described and discussed in various written and oral works. For example, Van Dijk (1992) examines the different ways in which descriptions of racism and racist actions are depicted by the perpetrators of such actions as well as by their victims. He notes that when descriptions of actions have negative implications for the majority, and especially for white elites, they are often seen as controversial and such controversial interpretations are typically marked with quotation marks or they are greeted with expressions of distance or doubt. The previously cited book, '' The Souls of Black Folk'' by W.E.B. Du Bois, represents early African-American literature that describes the author's experiences with racism when he was traveling in the
South South is one of the cardinal directions or Points of the compass, compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Pro ...
as an African American. Much American fictional literature has focused on issues of racism and the black "racial experience" in the US, including works written by whites, such as '' Uncle Tom's Cabin'', '' To Kill a Mockingbird'', and ''
Imitation of Life Imitation (from Latin ''imitatio'', "a copying, imitation") is a behavior whereby an individual observes and replicates another's behavior. Imitation is also a form of that leads to the "development of traditions, and ultimately our culture. I ...
'', or even the non-fiction work ''
Black Like Me ''Black Like Me'', first published in 1961, is a nonfiction book by journalist John Howard Griffin recounting his journey in the Deep South of the United States, at a time when African-Americans lived under racial segregation. Griffin was a nat ...
''. These books, and others like them, feed into what has been called the " white savior narrative in film", in which the heroes and heroines are white even though the story is about things that happen to black characters. Textual analysis of such writings can contrast sharply with black authors' descriptions of African Americans and their experiences in US society. African-American writers have sometimes been portrayed in African-American studies as retreating from racial issues when they write about " whiteness", while others identify this as an African-American literary tradition called "the literature of white estrangement", part of a multi-pronged effort to challenge and dismantle white supremacy in the US.


Popular usage

According to dictionaries, the word is commonly used to describe prejudice and discrimination based on race. Racism can also be said to describe a condition in society in which a dominant racial group benefits from the oppression of others, whether that group wants such benefits or not. Foucauldian scholar Ladelle McWhorter, in her 2009 book, ''Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America: A Genealogy'', posits modern racism similarly, focusing on the notion of a dominant group, usually whites, vying for racial purity and progress, rather than an overt or obvious ideology focused on the oppression of nonwhites. In popular usage, as in some academic usage, little distinction is made between "racism" and "
ethnocentrism Ethnocentrism in social science and anthropology—as well as in colloquial English discourse—means to apply one's own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, practices, behaviors, beliefs, and people, instead of ...
". Often, the two are listed together as "racial and ethnic" in describing some action or outcome that is associated with prejudice within a majority or dominant group in society. Furthermore, the meaning of the term racism is often conflated with the terms prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination. Racism is a complex concept that can involve each of those; but it cannot be equated with, nor is it synonymous, with these other terms. The term is often used in relation to what is seen as prejudice within a minority or subjugated group, as in the concept of reverse racism. "Reverse racism" is a concept often used to describe acts of discrimination or hostility against members of a dominant racial or ethnic group while favoring members of minority groups. This concept has been used especially in the United States in debates over
color-conscious Color consciousness is a theory stating that equality under the law is insufficient to address racial inequalities in society. It rejects the concept of fundamental racial differences, but holds that physical differences such as skin color can and d ...
policies (such as affirmative action) intended to remedy racial inequalities. However, many experts and other commenters view reverse racism as a myth rather than a reality. Scholars commonly define racism not only in terms of individual prejudice, but also in terms of a power structure that protects the interests of the dominant culture and actively discriminates against ethnic minorities. From this perspective, while members of ethnic minorities may be prejudiced against members of the dominant culture, they lack the political and economic power to actively oppress them, and they are therefore not practicing "racism".


Aspects

The ideology underlying racism can manifest in many aspects of social life. Such aspects are described in this section, although the list is not exhaustive.


Aversive racism

Aversive racism is a form of implicit racism, in which a person's unconscious negative evaluations of racial or ethnic minorities are realized by a persistent avoidance of interaction with other racial and ethnic groups. As opposed to traditional, overt racism, which is characterized by overt hatred for and explicit discrimination against racial/ethnic minorities, aversive racism is characterized by more complex, ambivalent expressions and attitudes. Aversive racism is similar in implications to the concept of symbolic or modern racism (described below), which is also a form of implicit, unconscious, or covert attitude which results in unconscious forms of discrimination. The term was coined by Joel Kovel to describe the subtle racial behaviors of any ethnic or racial group who rationalize their aversion to a particular group by appeal to rules or stereotypes. People who behave in an aversively racial way may profess egalitarian beliefs, and will often deny their racially motivated behavior; nevertheless they change their behavior when dealing with a member of another race or ethnic group than the one they belong to. The motivation for the change is thought to be implicit or subconscious. Experiments have provided empirical support for the existence of aversive racism. Aversive racism has been shown to have potentially serious implications for decision making in employment, in legal decisions and in helping behavior.


Color blindness

In relation to racism, color blindness is the disregard of racial characteristics in
social interaction A social relation or also described as a social interaction or social experience is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more individuals ...
, for example in the rejection of affirmative action, as a way to address the results of past patterns of discrimination. Critics of this attitude argue that by refusing to attend to racial disparities, racial color blindness in fact unconsciously perpetuates the patterns that produce racial inequality. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argues that color blind racism arises from an "abstract liberalism, biologization of culture, naturalization of racial matters, and minimization of racism". Color blind practices are "subtle,
institution Institutions are humanly devised structures of rules and norms that shape and constrain individual behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions a ...
al, and apparently nonracial" because race is explicitly ignored in decision-making. If race is disregarded in predominantly white populations, for example, whiteness becomes the normative standard, whereas people of color are othered, and the racism these individuals experience may be minimized or erased. At an individual level, people with "color blind prejudice" reject racist ideology, but also reject systemic policies intended to fix institutional racism.


Cultural

Cultural racism manifests as societal beliefs and customs that promote the assumption that the products of a given culture, including the language and traditions of that culture, are superior to those of other cultures. It shares a great deal with xenophobia, which is often characterized by fear of, or aggression toward, members of an
outgroup Outgroup may refer to: * Outgroup (cladistics), an evolutionary-history concept * Outgroup (sociology), a social group {{disambig ...
by members of an ingroup. In that sense it is also similar to communalism as used in South Asia. Cultural racism exists when there is a widespread acceptance of stereotypes concerning diverse ethnic or population groups. Whereas racism can be characterised by the belief that one race is inherently superior to another, cultural racism can be characterised by the belief that one culture is inherently superior to another.


Economic

Historical economic or social disparity is alleged to be a form of
discrimination Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, relig ...
caused by past racism and historical reasons, affecting the present generation through deficits in the formal education and kinds of preparation in previous generations, and through primarily unconscious racist attitudes and actions on members of the general population. Economic discrimination may lead to choices that perpetuate racism. For example, color photographic film was tuned for white skin as are automatic soap dispensers and facial recognition systems. In 2011, Bank of America agreed to pay $335 million to settle a federal government claim that its mortgage division, Countrywide Financial,
discriminated Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, relig ...
against black and Hispanic homebuyers.


Institutional

Institutional racism (also known as structural racism, state racism or systemic racism) is racial discrimination by governments, corporations, religions, or 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 organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin". Maulana Karenga argued that racism constituted the destruction of culture, language, religion, and human possibility and that the effects of racism were "the morally monstrous destruction of human possibility involved redefining African humanity to the world, poisoning past, present and future relations with others who only know us through this stereotyping and thus damaging the truly human relations among peoples".


Othering

Othering is the term used by some to describe a system of discrimination whereby the characteristics of a group are used to distinguish them as separate from the norm. Othering plays a fundamental role in the history and continuation of racism. To
objectify In social philosophy, objectification is the act of treating a person, as an object or a thing. It is part of dehumanization, the act of disavowing the humanity of others. Sexual objectification, the act of treating a person as a mere object of sex ...
a culture as something different, exotic or underdeveloped is to generalize that it is not like 'normal' society. Europe's colonial attitude towards the Orientals exemplifies this as it was thought that the East was the opposite of the West; feminine where the West was masculine, weak where the West was strong and traditional where the West was progressive.Said, Edward. (1978) ''Orientalism''. New York: Pantheon Books. p. 357 By making these generalizations and othering the East, Europe was simultaneously defining herself as the norm, further entrenching the gap. Much of the process of othering relies on imagined difference, or the expectation of difference. Spatial difference can be enough to conclude that "we" are "here" and the "others" are over "there". Imagined differences serve to categorize people into groups and assign them characteristics that suit the imaginer's expectations.


Racial discrimination

Racial discrimination refers to
discrimination Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, relig ...
against someone on the basis of their race.


Racial segregation

Racial segregation is the separation of humans into socially-constructed racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a bathroom, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home. Segregation is generally outlawed, but may exist through social norms, even when there is no strong individual preference for it, as suggested by Thomas Schelling's models of segregation and subsequent work.


Supremacism

Centuries of
European colonialism The historical phenomenon of colonization is one that stretches around the globe and across time. Ancient and medieval colonialism was practiced by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Turkish people, Turks, and the Arabs. Colonialism in the mode ...
in the Americas, Africa and Asia were often justified by white supremacist attitudes. During the early 20th century, the phrase " The White Man's Burden" was widely used to justify an imperialist policy as a noble enterprise. A justification for the policy of conquest and subjugation of Native Americans emanated from the stereotyped perceptions of the indigenous people as "merciless Indian savages", as they are described in the United States Declaration of Independence. Sam Wolfson of '' The Guardian'' writes that "the declaration's passage has often been cited as an encapsulation of the
dehumanizing Dehumanization is the denial of full humanness in others and the cruelty and suffering that accompanies it. A practical definition refers to it as the viewing and treatment of other persons as though they lack the mental capacities that are c ...
attitude toward indigenous Americans that the US was founded on." In an 1890 article about colonial expansion onto Native American land, author L. Frank Baum wrote: "The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians." In his '' Notes on the State of Virginia'', published in 1785, Thomas Jefferson wrote: "blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time or circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments of both body and mind." Attitudes of
black supremacy Black supremacy or black supremacism is a racial supremacist belief which maintains that black people are superior to people of other races. In the 1960s, Martin Luther King Jr. said that a doctrine of black supremacy was as dangerous as white ...
,
Arab supremacy Racism in the Arab world covers an array of forms of intolerance against non-Arabs and the expat majority of the Arab states of the Persian Gulf coming from ( Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh) groups as well as Black, European, and Asian ...
, and East Asian supremacy also exist.


Symbolic/modern

Some scholars argue that in the US, earlier violent and aggressive forms of racism have evolved into a more subtle form of prejudice in the late 20th century. This new form of racism is sometimes referred to as "modern racism" and it is characterized by outwardly acting unprejudiced while inwardly maintaining prejudiced attitudes, displaying subtle prejudiced behaviors such as actions informed by attributing qualities to others based on racial stereotypes, and evaluating the same behavior differently based on the race of the person being evaluated. This view is based on studies of prejudice and discriminatory behavior, where some people will act ambivalently towards black people, with positive reactions in certain, more public contexts, but more negative views and expressions in more private contexts. This ambivalence may also be visible for example in hiring decisions where job candidates that are otherwise positively evaluated may be unconsciously disfavored by employers in the final decision because of their race. Some scholars consider modern racism to be characterized by an explicit rejection of stereotypes, combined with resistance to changing structures of discrimination for reasons that are ostensibly non-racial, an ideology that considers opportunity at a purely individual basis denying the relevance of race in determining individual opportunities and the exhibition of indirect forms of micro-aggression toward and/or avoidance of people of other races.


Subconscious biases

Recent research has shown that individuals who consciously claim to reject racism may still exhibit race-based subconscious biases in their decision-making processes. While such "subconscious racial biases" do not fully fit the definition of racism, their impact can be similar, though typically less pronounced, not being explicit, conscious or deliberate.


International law and racial discrimination

In 1919, a
proposal Proposal(s) or The Proposal may refer to: * Proposal (business) * Research proposal * Proposal (marriage) * Proposition, a proposal in logic and philosophy Arts, entertainment, and media * The Proposal (album), ''The Proposal'' (album) Films ...
to include a racial equality provision in the Covenant of the League of Nations was supported by a majority, but not adopted in the
Paris Peace Conference Agreements and declarations resulting from meetings in Paris include: Listed by name Paris Accords may refer to: * Paris Accords, the agreements reached at the end of the London and Paris Conferences in 1954 concerning the post-war status of Germ ...
in 1919. In 1943, Japan and its allies declared work for the abolition of racial discrimination to be their aim at the Greater East Asia Conference. Article 1 of the 1945 UN Charter includes "promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race" as UN purpose. In 1950, UNESCO suggested in '' The Race Question''—a statement signed by 21 scholars such as Ashley Montagu, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Gunnar Myrdal,
Julian Huxley Sir Julian Sorell Huxley (22 June 1887 – 14 February 1975) was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century modern synthesis. ...
, etc.—to "drop the term ''race'' altogether and instead speak of ethnic groups". The statement condemned scientific racism theories that had played a role in the Holocaust. It aimed both at debunking scientific racist theories, by popularizing modern knowledge concerning "the race question", and morally condemned racism as contrary to the philosophy of the
Enlightenment Enlightenment or enlighten may refer to: Age of Enlightenment * Age of Enlightenment, period in Western intellectual history from the late 17th to late 18th century, centered in France but also encompassing (alphabetically by country or culture): ...
and its assumption of equal rights for all. Along with Myrdal's '' An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy'' (1944), ''The Race Question'' influenced the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court desegregation decision in '' Brown v. Board of Education''."Toward a World without Evil: Alfred Métraux as UNESCO Anthropologist (1946–1962)"
by
Harald E.L. Prins Harald E. L. Prins (born 1951) is a Dutch anthropologist, ethnohistorian, filmmaker, and human rights activist specialized in North and South America's indigenous peoples and cultures. Biography Harald Prins was born in the Netherlands and is a ...
, UNESCO
Also, in 1950, the European Convention on Human Rights was adopted, which was widely used on racial discrimination issues. The United Nations use 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 that 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 2001, the European Union explicitly banned racism, along with many other forms of social discrimination, in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, the legal effect of which, if any, would necessarily be limited to
Institutions of the European Union The institutions of the European Union are the seven principal decision-making bodies of the European Union and the Euratom. They are, as listed in Article 13 of the Treaty on European Union: * the European Parliament, * the European Counci ...
: "Article 21 of the charter prohibits discrimination on any ground such as 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."


Ideology

Racism existed during the 19th century as " scientific racism", which attempted to provide a racial classification of humanity. In 1775 Johann Blumenbach divided the world's population into five groups according to skin color (Caucasians, Mongols, etc.), positing the view that the non-Caucasians had arisen through a process of degeneration. Another early view in scientific racism was the polygenist view, which held that the different races had been separately created. Polygenist Christoph Meiners for example, split mankind into two divisions which he labeled the "beautiful White race" and the "ugly Black race". In Meiners' book, ''The Outline of History of Mankind'', he claimed that a main characteristic of race is either beauty or ugliness. He viewed only the white race as beautiful. He considered ugly races to be inferior, immoral and animal-like. Anders Retzius demonstrated that neither Europeans nor others are one "pure race", but of mixed origins. While discredited, derivations of Blumenbach's taxonomy are still widely used for the classification of the population in the United States.
Hans Peder Steensby Hans Peder Steensby (25 March 1875, Steensby, Skamby Sogn, Funen Island – 20 October 1920, aboard ship Frederik VIII) was an ethnographer, geographer and professor at the University of Copenhagen.H. P. Steensby: Racestudier i Danmark' (PDF; 1,22 ...
, while strongly emphasizing that all humans today are of mixed origins, in 1907 claimed that the origins of human differences must be traced extraordinarily far back in time, and conjectured that the "purest race" today would be the Australian Aboriginals. Scientific racism fell strongly out of favor in the early 20th century, but the origins of fundamental human and societal differences are still researched within academia, in fields such as human genetics including paleogenetics,
social anthropology Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In t ...
, comparative politics, history of religions, history of ideas, prehistory, history, ethics, and psychiatry. There is widespread rejection of any methodology based on anything similar to Blumenbach's races. It is more unclear to which extent and when ethnic and national stereotypes are accepted. Although after World War II and the Holocaust, racist ideologies were discredited on ethical, political and scientific grounds, racism and racial discrimination have remained widespread around the world. Du Bois observed that it is not so much "race" that we think about, but culture: "... a common history, common laws and religion, similar habits of thought and a conscious striving together for certain ideals of life". Late 19th century nationalists were the first to embrace contemporary discourses on "race", ethnicity, and "
survival of the fittest "Survival of the fittest" is a phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection. The biological concept of fitness is defined as reproductive success. In Darwinian terms, th ...
" to shape new nationalist doctrines. Ultimately, race came to represent not only the most important traits of the human body, but was also regarded as decisively shaping the character and personality of the nation. According to this view, culture is the physical manifestation created by ethnic groupings, as such fully determined by racial characteristics. Culture and race became considered intertwined and dependent upon each other, sometimes even to the extent of including nationality or language to the set of definition. Pureness of race tended to be related to rather superficial characteristics that were easily addressed and advertised, such as blondness. Racial qualities tended to be related to nationality and language rather than the actual geographic distribution of racial characteristics. In the case of Nordicism, the denomination " Germanic" was equivalent to superiority of race. Bolstered by some nationalist and ethnocentric values and achievements of choice, this concept of racial superiority evolved to distinguish from other cultures that were considered inferior or impure. This emphasis on culture corresponds to the modern mainstream definition of racism: " cism does not originate from the existence of 'races'. It ''creates'' them through a process of social division into categories: anybody can be racialised, independently of their somatic, cultural, religious differences." This definition explicitly ignores the biological concept of race, which is still subject to scientific debate. In the words of
David C. Rowe David C. Rowe (27 September 1949 – 2 February 2003) was an American psychology professor known for his work studying genetic and environmental influences on adolescent onset behaviors such as delinquency and smoking.J. L. Rodgers, K. Jacobs ...
, " racial concept, although sometimes in the guise of another name, will remain in use in biology and in other fields because scientists, as well as lay persons, are fascinated by human diversity, some of which is captured by race." Racial prejudice became subject to international legislation. For instance, the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on November 20, 1963, addresses racial prejudice explicitly next to discrimination for reasons of race, colour or ethnic origin (Article I).


Ethnicity and 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 Ethnocentrism in social science and anthropology—as well as in colloquial English discourse—means to apply one's own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, practices, behaviors, beliefs, and people, instead of ...
, although scholars attempt to clearly distinguish those phenomena from racism as an
ideology An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied pri ...
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 itself to conflict over land and strategic resources. In some cases,
ethnicity An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
and nationalism were harnessed in order to rally
combatant Combatant is the legal status of an individual who has the right to engage in hostilities during an armed conflict. The legal definition of "combatant" is found at article 43(2) of Additional Protocol I (AP1) to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. It ...
s in wars between great religious empires (for example, the Muslim Turks and the Catholic Austro-Hungarians). Notions of race and racism have often played central roles in
ethnic conflict An ethnic conflict is a conflict between two or more contending ethnic groups. While the source of the conflict may be political, social, economic or religious, the individuals in conflict must expressly fight for their ethnic group's positi ...
s. Throughout history, when an adversary is identified as "other" based on notions of race or ethnicity (in particular when "other" is interpreted 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 A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. A ...
or ethical considerations. 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".
Basil Davidson Basil Risbridger Davidson (9 November 1914 – 9 July 2010) was a British journalist and historian who wrote more than 30 books on African history and politics. According to two modern writers, "Davidson, a campaigning journalist whose fir ...
states in his documentary, ''Africa: Different but Equal'', that racism, in fact, only just recently surfaced as late as the 19th century, due to the need for a justification for slavery in the Americas. Historically, racism was a major driving force behind the Transatlantic slave trade. It was also a major force behind racial segregation, especially in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and South Africa under apartheid; 19th and 20th century racism in the Western world is particularly well documented and constitutes a reference point in studies and discourses about racism. Racism has played a role in genocides such as the Armenian genocide, and the Holocaust, and colonial projects like the European colonization of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Indigenous peoples have been—and are—often subject to racist attitudes. Practices and ideologies of racism are condemned by the United Nations in the Declaration of Human Rights.


Ethnic and racial nationalism

After the Napoleonic Wars, Europe was confronted with the new " nationalities question", leading to reconfigurations of the European map, on which the frontiers between the states had been delineated during the 1648
Peace of Westphalia The Peace of Westphalia (german: Westfälischer Friede, ) is the collective name for two peace treaties signed in October 1648 in the Westphalian cities of Osnabrück and Münster. They ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) and brought pea ...
. Nationalism had made its first appearance with the invention of the ''
levée en masse ''Levée en masse'' ( or, in English, "mass levy") is a French term used for a policy of mass national conscription, often in the face of invasion. The concept originated during the French Revolutionary Wars, particularly for the period followi ...
'' by the French Revolutionaries, thus inventing mass
conscription Conscription (also called the draft in the United States) is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day un ...
in order to be able to defend the newly founded
Republic A republic () is a "state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th c ...
against the ''
Ancien Régime ''Ancien'' may refer to * the French word for "ancient, old" ** Société des anciens textes français * the French for "former, senior" ** Virelai ancien ** Ancien Régime ** Ancien Régime in France {{disambig ...
'' order represented by the European monarchies. This led to the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802) and then to the conquests of
Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...
, and to the subsequent European-wide debates on the concepts and realities of nations, and in particular of
nation-state A nation state is a political unit where the state and nation are congruent. It is a more precise concept than "country", since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group. A nation, in the sense of a common ethnicity, may inc ...
s. The
Westphalia Treaty The Peace of Westphalia (german: Westfälischer Friede, ) is the collective name for two peace treaties signed in October 1648 in the Westphalian cities of Osnabrück and Münster. They ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) and brought pea ...
had divided Europe into various empires and kingdoms (such as the Ottoman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Swedish Empire, the Kingdom of France, etc.), and for centuries wars were waged between princes ('' Kabinettskriege'' in German). Modern
nation-state A nation state is a political unit where the state and nation are congruent. It is a more precise concept than "country", since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group. A nation, in the sense of a common ethnicity, may inc ...
s appeared in the wake of the French Revolution, with the formation of patriotic sentiments for the first time in Spain during the Peninsula War (1808–1813, known in Spain as the Independence War). Despite the restoration of the previous order with the 1815 Congress of Vienna, the "nationalities question" became the main problem of Europe during the Industrial Era, leading in particular to the
1848 Revolutions The Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Springtime of the Peoples or the Springtime of Nations, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe starting in 1848. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in Europe ...
, the
Italian unification The unification of Italy ( it, Unità d'Italia ), also known as the ''Risorgimento'' (, ; ), was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single ...
completed during the 1871 Franco-Prussian War, which itself culminated in the proclamation of the
German Empire The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...
in the Hall of Mirrors in the
Palace of Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, Yvelines, Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 19 ...
, thus achieving the German unification. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire, the " sick man of Europe", was confronted with endless nationalist movements, which, along with the dissolving of the
Austrian-Hungarian Empire Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1 ...
, would lead to the creation, after World War I, of the various nation-states of the
Balkan The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...
s, with "national minorities" in their borders. Ethnic nationalism, which advocated the belief in a hereditary membership of the nation, made its appearance in the historical context surrounding the creation of the modern nation-states. One of its main influences was the Romantic nationalist movement at the turn of the 19th century, represented by figures such as
Johann Herder Johann Gottfried von Herder ( , ; 25 August 174418 December 1803) was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the Enlightenment, ''Sturm und Drang'', and Weimar Classicism. Biography Born in Mohrun ...
(1744–1803), Johan Fichte (1762–1814) in the ''Addresses to the German Nation'' (1808),
Friedrich Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends ...
(1770–1831), or also, in France,
Jules Michelet Jules Michelet (; 21 August 1798 – 9 February 1874) was a French historian and an author on other topics whose major work was a history of France and its culture. His aphoristic style emphasized his anti-clerical republicanism. In Michelet's ...
(1798–1874). It was opposed to liberal nationalism, represented by authors such as
Ernest Renan Joseph Ernest Renan (; 27 February 18232 October 1892) was a French Orientalist and Semitic scholar, expert of Semitic languages and civilizations, historian of religion, philologist, philosopher, biblical scholar, and critic. He wrote influe ...
(1823–1892), who conceived of the nation as a community, which, instead of being based on the '' Volk'' ethnic group and on a specific, common language, was founded on the subjective will to live together ("the nation is a daily plebiscite", 1882) or also
John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to ...
(1806–1873). Ethnic nationalism blended with scientific racist discourses, as well as with "continental imperialist" (
Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt (, , ; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century. Arendt was born ...
, 1951
Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt (, , ; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century. Arendt was born ...
, '' The Origins of Totalitarianism'' (1951)
) discourses, for example in the
pan-Germanism Pan-Germanism (german: Pangermanismus or '), also occasionally known as Pan-Germanicism, is a pan-nationalist political idea. Pan-Germanists originally sought to unify all the German-speaking people – and possibly also Germanic-speaking ...
discourses, which postulated the racial superiority of the German '' Volk'' (people/folk). The
Pan-German League The Pan-German League (german: Alldeutscher Verband) was a Pan-German nationalist organization which was officially founded in 1891, a year after the Zanzibar Treaty was signed. Primarily dedicated to the German Question of the time, it held pos ...
(''Alldeutscher Verband''), created in 1891, promoted
German imperialism Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...
and " racial hygiene", and was opposed to intermarriage with Jews. Another popular current, the ''
Völkisch movement The ''Völkisch'' movement (german: Völkische Bewegung; alternative en, Folkist Movement) was a German ethno-nationalist movement active from the late 19th century through to the Nazi era, with remnants in the Federal Republic of Germany af ...
'', was also an important proponent of the German ethnic nationalist discourse, and it combined Pan-Germanism with modern racial antisemitism. Members of the Völkisch movement, in particular the Thule Society, would participate in the founding of the German Workers' Party (DAP) in Munich in 1918, the predecessor of the Nazi Party. Pan-Germanism played a decisive role in the
interwar period In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days), the end of the World War I, First World War to the beginning of the World War II, Second World War. The in ...
of the 1920s–1930s. These currents began to associate the idea of the nation with the biological concept of a " master race" (often the " Aryan race" or the " Nordic race") issued from the scientific racist discourse. They conflated nationalities with ethnic groups, called "races", in a radical distinction from previous racial discourses that posited the existence of a "race struggle" inside the nation and the state itself. Furthermore, they believed that political boundaries should mirror these alleged racial and ethnic groups, thus justifying
ethnic cleansing Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal, extermination, deportation or population transfer ...
, in order to achieve "racial purity" and also to achieve ethnic homogeneity in the nation-state. Such racist discourses, combined with nationalism, were not, however, limited to pan-Germanism. In France, the transition from Republican liberal nationalism, to ethnic nationalism, which made nationalism a characteristic of far-right movements in France, took place during the Dreyfus Affair at the end of the 19th century. During several years, a nationwide crisis affected French society, concerning the alleged treason of
Alfred Dreyfus Alfred Dreyfus ( , also , ; 9 October 1859 – 12 July 1935) was a French artillery officer of Jewish ancestry whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most polarizing political dramas in modern French history. ...
, a French Jewish military officer. The country polarized itself into two opposite camps, one represented by Émile Zola, who wrote '' J'Accuse…!'' in defense of Alfred Dreyfus, and the other represented by the nationalist poet,
Maurice Barrès Auguste-Maurice Barrès (; 19 August 1862 – 4 December 1923) was a French novelist, journalist and politician. Spending some time in Italy, he became a figure in French literature with the release of his work ''The Cult of the Self'' in 1888. ...
(1862–1923), one of the founders of the ethnic nationalist discourse in France. At the same time, Charles Maurras (1868–1952), founder of the monarchist '' Action française'' movement, theorized the "anti-France", composed of the "four confederate states of Protestants, Jews, Freemasons and foreigners" (his actual word for the latter being the pejorative ''
métèques In ancient Greece, a metic (Ancient Greek: , : from , , indicating change, and , 'dwelling') was a foreign resident of Athens, one who did not have citizen rights in their Greek city-state (''polis'') of residence. Origin The history of foreign m ...
''). Indeed, to him the first three were all "internal foreigners", who threatened the ethnic unity of the French people.


History


Ethnocentrism and proto-racism


Aristotle

Bernard Lewis has cited the Greek philosopher Aristotle who, in his discussion of slavery, stated that while Greeks are free by nature, "
barbarian A barbarian (or savage) is someone who is perceived to be either Civilization, uncivilized or primitive. The designation is usually applied as a generalization based on a popular stereotype; barbarians can be members of any nation judged by som ...
s" (non-Greeks) are slaves by nature, in that it is in their nature to be more willing to submit to a despotic government. Though Aristotle does not specify any particular races, he argues that people from nations outside Greece are more prone to the burden of slavery than those from Greece. While Aristotle makes remarks about the most natural slaves being those with strong bodies and slave souls (unfit for rule, unintelligent) which would seem to imply a physical basis for discrimination, he also explicitly states that the right kind of souls and bodies do not always go together, implying that the greatest determinate for inferiority and natural slaves versus natural masters is the soul, not the body. This proto-racism is seen as an important precursor to modern racism by classicist
Benjamin Isaac Benjamin Henri Isaac (Ben Isaac; he, בנימין איזק; born May 10, 1945) is the Fred and Helen Lessing Professor of Ancient History Emeritus at Tel Aviv University. He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and of the A ...
. Such proto-racism and ethnocentrism must be looked at within context, because a modern understanding of racism based on hereditary inferiority (with modern racism based on eugenics and scientific racism) was not yet developed and it is unclear whether Aristotle believed the natural inferiority of Barbarians was caused by environment and climate (like many of his contemporaries) or by birth. Historian Dante A. Puzzo, in his discussion of Aristotle, racism, and the ancient world writes that:
Racism rests on two basic assumptions: that a correlation exists between physical characteristics and moral qualities; that mankind is divisible into superior and inferior stocks. Racism, thus defined, is a modern conception, for prior to the XVIth century there was virtually nothing in the life and thought of the West that can be described as racist. To prevent misunderstanding a clear distinction must be made between racism and
ethnocentrism Ethnocentrism in social science and anthropology—as well as in colloquial English discourse—means to apply one's own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, practices, behaviors, beliefs, and people, instead of ...
 ... The Ancient Hebrews, in referring to all who were not Hebrews as Gentiles, were indulging in ethnocentrism, not in racism. ... So it was with the Hellenes who denominated all non-Hellenes—whether the wild Scythians or the
Egyptians Egyptians ( arz, المَصرِيُون, translit=al-Maṣriyyūn, ; arz, المَصرِيِين, translit=al-Maṣriyyīn, ; cop, ⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ, remenkhēmi) are an ethnic group native to the Nile, Nile Valley in Egypt. Egyptian ...
whom they acknowledged as their mentors in the arts of civilization—Barbarians, the term denoting that which was strange or foreign.


Medieval Arab writers

Bernard Lewis has also cited historians and geographers of the Middle East and North Africa region, including
Al-Muqaddasi Shams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Abī Bakr al-Maqdisī ( ar, شَمْس ٱلدِّيْن أَبُو عَبْد ٱلله مُحَمَّد ابْن أَحْمَد ابْن أَبِي بَكْر ٱلْمَقْدِسِي), ...
, Al-Jahiz, Al-Masudi, Abu Rayhan Biruni,
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Tūsī ( fa, محمد ابن محمد ابن حسن طوسی 18 February 1201 – 26 June 1274), better known as Nasir al-Din al-Tusi ( fa, نصیر الدین طوسی, links=no; or simply Tusi in the West ...
, and Ibn Qutaybah. Though the Qur'an expresses no racial prejudice, Lewis argues that ethnocentric prejudice later developed among Arabs, for a variety of reasons: their extensive conquests and slave trade; the influence of Aristotelian ideas regarding slavery, which some
Muslim philosophers Muslim philosophers both profess Islam and engage in a style of philosophy situated within the structure of the Arabic language and Islam, though not necessarily concerned with religious issues. The sayings of the companions of Muhammad contained ...
directed towards Zanj (
Bantu Bantu may refer to: *Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages *Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language *Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle *Black Association for Nationali ...
) and Turkic peoples; and the influence of
Judeo-Christian The term Judeo-Christian is used to group Christianity and Judaism together, either in reference to Christianity's derivation from Judaism, Christianity's borrowing of Jewish Scripture to constitute the "Old Testament" of the Christian Bible, or ...
ideas regarding divisions among humankind. By the eighth century, anti-black prejudice among Arabs resulted in discrimination. A number of medieval Arabic authors argued against this prejudice, urging respect for all black people and especially Ethiopians. By the 14th century, a significant number of slaves came from
sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. These include West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the List of sov ...
; Lewis argues that this led to the likes of Egyptian historian Al-Abshibi (1388–1446) writing that " is said that when the lackslave is sated, he fornicates, when he is hungry, he steals." According to Lewis, the 14th-century Tunisian scholar
Ibn Khaldun Ibn Khaldun (; ar, أبو زيد عبد الرحمن بن محمد بن خلدون الحضرمي, ; 27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406, 732-808 AH) was an Arab The Historical Muhammad', Irving M. Zeitlin, (Polity Press, 2007), p. 21; "It is, of ...
also wrote:
...beyond
nown peoples of black West Africa A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
to the south there is no civilization in the proper sense. There are only humans who are closer to dumb animals than to rational beings. They live in thickets and caves, and eat herbs and unprepared grain. They frequently eat each other. They cannot be considered human beings. Therefore, the Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because (Negroes) have little that is (essentially) human and possess attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated.
According to Wesleyan University professor Abdelmajid Hannoum, French Orientalists projected racist and colonialist views of the 19th century into their translations of medieval Arabic writings, including those of Ibn Khaldun. This resulted in the translated texts racializing Arabs and
Berber Berber or Berbers may refer to: Ethnic group * Berbers, an ethnic group native to Northern Africa * Berber languages, a family of Afro-Asiatic languages Places * Berber, Sudan, a town on the Nile People with the surname * Ady Berber (1913–196 ...
people, when no such distinction was made in the originals. James E. Lindsay argues that the concept of an Arab identity itself did not exist until modern times, though others like
Robert Hoyland Robert G. Hoyland (born 1966) is a historian, specializing in the medieval history of the Middle East. He is a former student of historian Patricia Crone and was a Leverhulme Fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford. He is currently Professor of Late ...
have argued that a common sense of Arab identity already existed by the 9th century.


''Limpieza de sangre''

With the Umayyad Caliphate's conquest of Hispania, Muslim Arabs and
Berbers , image = File:Berber_flag.svg , caption = The Berber ethnic flag , population = 36 million , region1 = Morocco , pop1 = 14 million to 18 million , region2 = Algeria , pop2 ...
overthrew the previous Visigothic rulers and created Al-Andalus, which contributed to the Golden age of Jewish culture, and lasted for six centuries. It was followed by the centuries-long '' Reconquista'', during which Christian Iberian kingdoms contested Al-Andalus and progressively conquered the divided Muslim kingdoms, culminating in the fall of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada in 1492 and the rise of
Ferdinand V Ferdinand V is the name of: * Ferdinand II of Aragon, Ferdinand V of Castile, ''the Catholic'' king of Castile, Aragon and Naples *Ferdinand I of Austria en, Ferdinand Charles Leopold Joseph Francis Marcelin , image = Kaiser Ferdinand I.j ...
and Isabella I as Catholic monarchs of Spain. The legacy Catholic
Spaniards Spaniards, or Spanish people, are a Romance peoples, Romance ethnic group native to Spain. Within Spain, there are a number of National and regional identity in Spain, national and regional ethnic identities that reflect the country's complex Hist ...
then formulated the '' limpieza de sangre'' ("cleanliness of blood") doctrine. It was during this time in history that the Western concept of aristocratic " blue blood" emerged in a racialized, religious and feudal context, so as to stem the upward social mobility of the converted New Christians. Robert Lacey explains:
It was the Spaniards who gave the world the notion that an aristocrat's blood is not red but blue. The Spanish nobility started taking shape around the ninth century in classic military fashion, occupying land as warriors on horseback. They were to continue the process for more than five hundred years, clawing back sections of the peninsula from its Moorish occupiers, and a nobleman demonstrated his pedigree by holding up his sword arm to display the filigree of blue-blooded veins beneath his pale skin—proof that his birth had not been contaminated by the dark-skinned enemy. Sangre azul, blue blood, was thus a euphemism for being a white man—Spain's own particular reminder that the refined footsteps of the aristocracy through history carry the rather less refined spoor of racism.
Following the expulsion of the Arabic Moors and most of the Sephardic Jews from the Iberian peninsula, the remaining Jews and
Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
s were forced to convert to Roman Catholicism, becoming " New Christians", who were sometimes discriminated against by the " Old Christians" in some cities (including
Toledo Toledo most commonly refers to: * Toledo, Spain, a city in Spain * Province of Toledo, Spain * Toledo, Ohio, a city in the United States Toledo may also refer to: Places Belize * Toledo District * Toledo Settlement Bolivia * Toledo, Orur ...
), despite condemnations by the Church and the State, which both welcomed the new flock. The Inquisition was carried out by members of the Dominican Order in order to weed out the converts who still practiced Judaism and
Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...
in secret. The system and ideology of the ''limpieza de sangre'' ostracized false Christian converts from society in order to protect it against treason. The remnants of such legislation persevered into the 19th century in military contexts. In Portugal, the legal distinction between New and Old Christian was only ended through a legal decree issued by the Marquis of Pombal in 1772, almost three centuries after the implementation of the racist discrimination. The ''limpieza de sangre'' legislation was common also during the colonization of the Americas, where it led to the racial and feudal separation of peoples and social strata in the colonies. It was however often ignored in practice, as the new colonies needed skilled people. At the end of the Renaissance, the Valladolid debate (1550–1551), concerning the treatment of the natives of the " New World" pitted the Dominican friar and Bishop of Chiapas, Bartolomé de Las Casas, to another Dominican and Humanist
philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
,
Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (11 June 1494 – 17 November 1573) was a Spanish Renaissance humanist, philosopher, and theologian. Biography In 1533 and 1534 Sepúlveda wrote to Desiderius Erasmus from Rome concerning differences between Erasm ...
. The latter argued that the
Indians Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...
practiced human sacrifice of innocents,
cannibalism Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well documented, b ...
, and other such "crimes against nature"; they were unacceptable and should be suppressed by any means possible including war, thus reducing them to slavery or serfdom was in accordance with Catholic theology and natural law. To the contrary, Bartolomé de Las Casas argued that the Amerindians were free men in the natural order and deserved the same treatment as others, according to
Catholic theology Catholic theology is the understanding of Catholic doctrine or teachings, and results from the studies of theologians. It is based on canonical scripture, and sacred tradition, as interpreted authoritatively by the magisterium of the Catholic ...
. It was one of the many controversies concerning racism, slavery, religion, and European morality that would arise in the following centuries and which resulted in the legislation protecting the natives. The marriage between Luisa de Abrego, a free black domestic servant from Seville and Miguel Rodríguez, a white segovian conquistador in 1565 in St. Augustine (Spanish Florida), is the first known and recorded Christian marriage anywhere in the continental United States. In the Spanish colonies, Spaniards developed a complex
caste system Caste is a form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultura ...
based on race, which was used for social control, and which also determined a person's importance in society. While many Latin American countries have long since rendered the system officially illegal through legislation, usually at the time of their independence, prejudice based on degrees of perceived racial distance from European ancestry combined with one's socioeconomic status remain, an echo of the colonial caste system.


Racism as a modern phenomenon

Although
antisemitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...
has a long history, related to Christianity and native Egyptian or Greek religions (
anti-Judaism Anti-Judaism is the "total or partial opposition to Judaism as a religion—and the total or partial opposition to Jews as adherents of it—by persons who accept a competing system of beliefs and practices and consider certain genuine Judai ...
), racism itself is sometimes described as a ''modern'' phenomenon. In the view of the French philosopher and historian
Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
, the first formulation of racism emerged in the Early Modern period as the "
discourse Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. ...
of race struggle", and a historical and political discourse, which Foucault opposed to the philosophical and juridical discourse of sovereignty. On the other hand, e.g. Chinese self-identification as a "yellow race" predated such European racial concepts. This European analysis, which first appeared in Great Britain, was then carried on in France by such people as
Boulainvilliers Henri de Boulainvilliers (; 21 October 1658, Saint-Saire, Normandy – 23 January 1722, Paris) was a French nobleman, writer and historian. He was educated at the College of Juilly; he served in the army until 1697. Primarily remembered as an e ...
,
Nicolas Fréret Nicolas Fréret (; 15 February 1688 – 8 March 1749) was a French scholar. Life He was born at Paris on 15 February 1688. His father was ''procureur'' to the ''parlement'' of Paris, and destined him to the profession of the law. His first tut ...
, and then, during the 1789 French Revolution, Sieyès, and afterwards,
Augustin Thierry Augustin Thierry (or ''Jacques Nicolas Augustin Thierry''; 10 May 179522 May 1856) was a French historian. Although originally a follower of Henri de Saint-Simon, he later developed his own approach to history. A committed liberal, his approach ...
and Cournot. Boulainvilliers, who created the matrix of such racist discourse in medieval France, conceived of the "race" as being something closer to the sense of a "nation", that is, in his time, the "race" meant the "people". He conceived of France as being divided between various nations—the unified
nation-state A nation state is a political unit where the state and nation are congruent. It is a more precise concept than "country", since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group. A nation, in the sense of a common ethnicity, may inc ...
is an
anachronism An anachronism (from the Ancient Greek, Greek , 'against' and , 'time') is a chronology, chronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of people, events, objects, language terms and customs from different time per ...
here—which themselves formed different "races". Boulainvilliers opposed the absolute monarchy, which tried to bypass the
aristocracy Aristocracy (, ) is a form of government that places strength in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocracy (class), aristocrats. The term derives from the el, αριστοκρατία (), meaning 'rule of the best'. At t ...
by establishing a direct relationship to the Third Estate. Thus, he developed the theory that the French aristocrats were the descendants of foreign invaders, whom he called the " Franks", while according to him, the Third Estate constituted the autochthonous, vanquished
Gallo-Romans Gallo-Roman culture was a consequence of the Romanization (cultural), Romanization of Gauls under the rule of the Roman Empire. It was characterized by the Gaulish adoption or adaptation of Roman culture, Roman culture, language, morals and wa ...
, 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 ''Comte'' is the French, Catalan and Occitan form of the word 'count' (Latin: ''comes''); ''comté'' is the Gallo-Romance form of the word 'county' (Latin: ''comitatus''). Comte or Comté may refer to: * A count in French, from Latin ''comes'' * A ...
, 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 contempt for the Third Estate, calling it "this new people born of slaves ... mixture of all races and of all times".


19th century

While 19th-century racism became closely intertwined with nationalism, leading to the ethnic nationalist discourse that identified the "race" with the " folk", leading to such movements as
pan-Germanism Pan-Germanism (german: Pangermanismus or '), also occasionally known as Pan-Germanicism, is a pan-nationalist political idea. Pan-Germanists originally sought to unify all the German-speaking people – and possibly also Germanic-speaking ...
, pan-Turkism,
pan-Arabism Pan-Arabism ( ar, الوحدة العربية or ) is an ideology that espouses the unification of the countries of North Africa and Western Asia from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea, which is referred to as the Arab world. It is closely c ...
, and pan-Slavism, medieval racism precisely divided the nation into various non-biological "races", which were thought to be the consequence of historical conquests and social conflicts. Michel Foucault traced 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 they also transformed this popular discourse into a " state racism" (e.g., Nazism). On the other hand, Marxism also seized this discourse founded on the assumption of a political struggle that provided the real engine of history and continued to act underneath the apparent peace. Thus, Marxists transformed the essentialist notion of "race" into the historical notion of "
class struggle Class conflict, also referred to as class struggle and class warfare, is the political tension and economic antagonism that exists in society because of socio-economic competition among the social classes or between rich and poor. The forms ...
", defined by socially structured positions: capitalist or proletarian. In ''
The Will to Knowledge ''The History of Sexuality'' (french: L'Histoire de la sexualité) is a four-volume study of sexuality in the Western world by the French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault, in which the author examines the emergence of "sexuality" as a di ...
'' (1976), Foucault analyzed another opponent of the "race struggle" discourse: Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis, which opposed the concept of "blood
heredity Heredity, also called inheritance or biological inheritance, is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring; either through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or organisms acquire the genetic inform ...
", prevalent in the 19th century racist discourse. Authors such as
Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt (, , ; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century. Arendt was born ...
, in her 1951 book '' The Origins of Totalitarianism'', have said that the racist ideology (''popular racism'') which developed at the end of the 19th century helped legitimize the imperialist conquests of foreign territories and the atrocities that sometimes accompanied them (such as the Herero and Namaqua Genocide of 1904–1907 or the Armenian genocide of 1915–1917). Rudyard Kipling's poem, '' The White Man's Burden'' (1899), is one of the more famous illustrations of the belief in the inherent superiority of the European culture over the rest of the world, though it is also thought to be a satirical appraisal of such imperialism. Racist ideology thus helped legitimize the conquest and incorporation of foreign territories into an empire, which were regarded as a humanitarian obligation partially as a result of these racist beliefs. However, during the 19th century, Western European colonial powers were involved in the suppression of the Arab slave trade in Africa, as well as in the suppression of the slave trade in West Africa. Some Europeans during the time period objected to injustices that occurred in some colonies and lobbied on behalf of aboriginal peoples. Thus, when the Hottentot Venus was displayed in England in the beginning of the 19th century, the African Association publicly opposed itself to the exhibition. The same year that Kipling published his poem,
Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, ; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Poles in the United Kingdom#19th century, Polish-British novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in t ...
published ''
Heart of Darkness ''Heart of Darkness'' (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad in which the sailor Charles Marlow tells his listeners the story of his assignment as steamer captain for a Belgian company in the African interior. The novel ...
'' (1899), a clear criticism of the
Congo Free State ''(Work and Progress) , national_anthem = Vers l'avenir , capital = Vivi Boma , currency = Congo Free State franc , religion = Catholicism (''de facto'') , leader1 = Leopo ...
, which was owned by Leopold II of Belgium. Examples of racial theories used include the creation of the Hamitic ethno-linguistic group during the European exploration of Africa. It was then restricted by
Karl Friedrich Lepsius Karl Richard Lepsius ( la, Carolus Richardius Lepsius) (23 December 181010 July 1884) was a pioneering Prussian Egyptologist, linguist and modern archaeologist. He is widely known for his magnum opus ''Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien'' ...
(1810–1877) to non-
Semitic Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta. Semitic may also refer to: Religions * Abrahamic religions ** ...
Afro-Asiatic languages. The term ''Hamite'' was applied to different populations within North Africa, mainly comprising Ethiopians, Eritreans, Somalis,
Berbers , image = File:Berber_flag.svg , caption = The Berber ethnic flag , population = 36 million , region1 = Morocco , pop1 = 14 million to 18 million , region2 = Algeria , pop2 ...
, and the ancient Egyptians. Hamites were regarded as Caucasoid peoples who probably originated in either Arabia or Asia on the basis of their cultural, physical and linguistic similarities with the peoples of those areas. Europeans considered Hamites to be more civilized than
Sub-Saharan Africans Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. These include West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the African co ...
, and more akin to themselves and Semitic peoples. In the first two-thirds of the 20th century, the Hamitic race was, in fact, considered one of the branches of the
Caucasian race The Caucasian race (also Caucasoid or Europid, Europoid) is an obsolete racial classification of human beings based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. The ''Caucasian race'' was historically regarded as a biological taxon which, de ...
, along with the Indo-Europeans, Semites, and the Mediterraneans. However, the Hamitic peoples themselves were often deemed to have failed as rulers, which was usually ascribed to interbreeding with
Negroe In the English language, ''negro'' is a term historically used to denote persons considered to be of Black African heritage. The word ''negro'' means the color black in both Spanish and in Portuguese, where English took it from. The term can ...
s. In the mid-20th century, the German scholar Carl Meinhof (1857–1944) claimed that the
Bantu Bantu may refer to: *Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages *Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language *Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle *Black Association for Nationali ...
race was formed by a merger of Hamitic and Negro races. The Hottentots ( Nama or Khoi) were formed by the merger of Hamitic and
Bushmen The San peoples (also Saan), or Bushmen, are members of various Khoe, Tuu, or Kxʼa-speaking indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures that are the first cultures of Southern Africa, and whose territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, ...
(San) races—both being termed nowadays as
Khoisan Khoisan , or (), according to the contemporary Khoekhoegowab orthography, is a catch-all term for those indigenous peoples of Southern Africa who do not speak one of the Bantu languages, combining the (formerly "Khoikhoi") and the or ( in t ...
peoples. In the United States in the early 19th century, the American Colonization Society was established as the primary vehicle for proposals to return black Americans to greater freedom and equality in Africa. The colonization effort resulted from a mixture of motives with its founder
Henry Clay Henry Clay Sr. (April 12, 1777June 29, 1852) was an American attorney and statesman who represented Kentucky in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. He was the seventh House speaker as well as the ninth secretary of state, al ...
stating that "unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, they never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country. It was desirable, therefore, as it respected them, and the residue of the population of the country, to drain them off". Racism spread throughout the New World in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Whitecapping, which started in Indiana in the late 19th century, soon spread throughout all of North America, causing many African laborers to flee from the land they worked on. In the US, during the 1860s, racist posters were used during election campaigns. In one of these racist posters (see above), a black man is depicted lounging idly in the foreground as one white man ploughs his field and another chops wood. Accompanying labels are: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread", and "The white man must work to keep his children and pay his taxes." The black man wonders, "Whar is de use for me to work as long as dey make dese appropriations." Above in a cloud is an image of the "Freedman's Bureau! Negro Estimate of Freedom!" The bureau is pictured as a large domed building resembling the U.S. Capitol and is inscribed "Freedom and No Work". Its columns and walls are labeled, "Candy", "Rum, Gin, Whiskey", "Sugar Plums", "Indolence", "White Women", "Apathy", "White Sugar", "Idleness", and so on. On June 5, 1873, Sir
Francis Galton Sir Francis Galton, FRS FRAI (; 16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911), was an English Victorian era polymath: a statistician, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto- ...
, distinguished English explorer and cousin of Charles Darwin, wrote in a letter to '' The Times'':


20th century

The Nazi party, which seized power in the 1933 German elections and maintained a dictatorship over much of Europe until the End of World War II on the European continent, deemed the Germans to be part of an Aryan " master race" (''Herrenvolk''), who therefore had the right to expand their territory and enslave or kill members of other races deemed inferior. The racial ideology conceived by the Nazis graded humans on a scale of pure Aryan to non-Aryan, with the latter viewed as subhuman. At the top of the scale of pure Aryans were Germans and other Germanic peoples including the Dutch, Scandinavians, and the English as well as other peoples such as some northern Italians and the French, who were said to have a suitable admixture of Germanic blood.Davies, Norman (2006). ''Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory''. Macmillan Pubs (pp. 167, 4). Nazi policies labeled Romani people, people of color, and
Slavs Slavs are the largest European ethnolinguistic group. They speak the various Slavic languages, belonging to the larger Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout northern Eurasia, main ...
(mainly
Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in Ce ...
, Serbs, Russians,
Belarusians , native_name_lang = be , pop = 9.5–10 million , image = , caption = , popplace = 7.99 million , region1 = , pop1 = 600,000–768,000 , region2 = , pop2 ...
, Ukrainians and Czechs) as inferior non-Aryan subhumans.''Operation Barbarossa: Ideology and Ethics against Human Dignity'', by André Mineau, (Rodopi, 2004) p. 180 Jews were at the bottom of the hierarchy, considered inhuman and thus unworthy of life.''The Czechs under Nazi Rule: The Failure of National Resistance, 1939–1942'', Vojtěch Mastný, Columbia University Press ''The Politics of Fertility in Twentieth-Century Berlin'', p. 118 Annette F. Timm. 2010. The Nazis' singleminded desire to "purify" the German race through the elimination of non-Aryans (particularly Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs) In accordance with Nazi racial ideology, approximately six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. 2.5 million
ethnic Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in Cen ...
, 0.5 million ethnic Serbs and 0.2–0.5 million
Romani Romani may refer to: Ethnicities * Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia ** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule * Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...
were killed by the regime and its collaborators. The Nazis considered most
Slavs Slavs are the largest European ethnolinguistic group. They speak the various Slavic languages, belonging to the larger Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout northern Eurasia, main ...
to be non-Aryan '' Untermenschen''. The Nazi Party's chief racial theorist, Alfred Rosenberg, adopted the term from Klansman Lothrop Stoddard's 1922 book ''The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man''. In the secret plan Generalplan Ost ("Master Plan East") the Nazis resolved to expel, enslave, or exterminate most Slavic people to provide " living space" for Germans, but Nazi policy towards Slavs changed during World War II due to manpower shortages which necessitated limited Slavic participation in the Waffen-SS.Norman Davies. ''Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory''. pp. 167, 209. Significant war crimes were committed against Slavs, particularly
Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in Ce ...
, and Soviet POWs had a far higher mortality rate than their American and British counterparts due to deliberate neglect and mistreatment. Between June 1941 and January 1942, the Nazis killed an estimated 2.8 million Red Army POWs, whom they viewed as "subhuman". In the years 1943–1945, around 120,000 Polish people, mostly women and children, became the victims of ethnicity-based massacres by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which was then operating in the territory of occupied Poland.
Norman Davies Ivor Norman Richard Davies (born 8 June 1939) is a Welsh-Polish historian, known for his publications on the history of Europe, Poland and the United Kingdom. He has a special interest in Central and Eastern Europe and is UNESCO Professor at ...
, '' Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory'' Publisher: Pan Books, 2007, 544 pages,
In addition to Poles who represented the vast majority of the murdered people, the victims also included Jews, Armenians, Russians, and Ukrainians who were married to Poles or attempted to help them. During the intensification of ties with Nazi Germany in the 1930s, Ante Pavelić and the Ustaše and their idea of the Croatian nation became increasingly race-oriented. The Ustaše view of national and racial identity, as well as the theory of Serbs as an inferior race, was influenced by Croatian nationalists and intellectuals from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Serbs were primary targets of racial laws and murders in the puppet Independent State of Croatia (NDH); Jews and Roma were also targeted. The Ustaše introduced laws to strip Serbs of their citizenship, livelihoods, and possessions. During the genocide in the NDH, Serbs suffered among the highest casualty rates in Europe during the World War II, and the NDH was one of the most lethal regimes in the 20th century. German praise for America's institutional racism was continuous throughout the early 1930s, and Nazi lawyers were advocates of the use of American models. Race based U.S. citizenship laws and
anti-miscegenation laws Anti-miscegenation laws or miscegenation laws are laws that enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalization, criminalizing interracial marriage and sometimes also sex between members of different R ...
(no race mixing) directly inspired the Nazi's two principal Nuremberg racial laws—the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law. Hitler's 1925 memoir ''
Mein Kampf (; ''My Struggle'' or ''My Battle'') is a 1925 autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work describes the process by which Hitler became antisemitic and outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germ ...
'' was full of admiration for America's treatment of "coloreds". Nazi expansion eastward was accompanied with invocation of America's colonial expansion westward, with the accompanying actions toward the Native Americans. In 1928, Hitler praised Americans for having "gunned down the millions of Redskins to a few hundred thousand, and now keeps the modest remnant under observation in a cage." On Nazi Germany's expansion eastward, in 1941 Hitler stated, "Our Mississippi
he line beyond which Thomas Jefferson wanted all Indians expelled He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' i ...
must be the Volga." White supremacy was dominant in the U.S. from its founding up to the civil rights movement. On the U.S. immigration laws prior to 1965, sociologist Stephen Klineberg cited the law as clearly declaring "that Northern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the white race." While anti-Asian racism was embedded in U.S. politics and culture in the early 20th century,
Indians Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...
were also racialized for their anticolonialism, with U.S. officials, casting them as a "Hindu" menace, pushing for Western imperial expansion abroad. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U.S. citizenship to whites only, and in the 1923 case, ''
United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind ''United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind'', 261 U.S. 204 (1923), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States decided that Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian Sikh man who identified himself as an Aryan, was ineligible for naturalized citi ...
'', the Supreme Court ruled that high caste Hindus were not "white persons" and were therefore racially ineligible for naturalized citizenship. It was after the Luce–Celler Act of 1946 that a quota of 100 Indians per year could immigrate to the U.S. and become citizens. The
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart–Celler Act and more recently as the 1965 Immigration Act, is a federal law passed by the 89th United States Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The l ...
dramatically opened entry to the U.S. to immigrants other than traditional Northern European and Germanic groups, and as a result would significantly alter the demographic mix in the U.S. Serious race riots in Durban between
Indians Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...
and Zulus erupted in 1949.
Ne Win Ne Win ( my, နေဝင်း ; 10 July 1910, or 14 or 24 May 1911 – 5 December 2002) was a Burmese politician and military commander who served as Prime Minister of Burma from 1958 to 1960 and 1962 to 1974, and also President of Burma ...
's rise to power in Burma in 1962 and his relentless persecution of "resident aliens" led to an exodus of some 300,000
Burmese Indians Burmese Indians are a group of people of Indian origin who live in Myanmar (Burma). The term 'Burmese Indian' refers to a broad range of people from South Asia, most notably from present-day countries such as India, Bangladesh and also Pakis ...
. They migrated to escape racial discrimination and wholesale nationalisation of private enterprises a few years later, in 1964. The Zanzibar Revolution of January 12, 1964, put an end to the local Arab dynasty. Thousands of Arabs and Indians in Zanzibar were massacred in riots, and thousands more were detained or fled the island. In August 1972, Ugandan President Idi Amin started the expropriation of properties owned by Asians and Europeans. In the same year, Amin ethnically cleansed Uganda's Asians, giving them 90 days to leave the country. Shortly after World War II, the South African National Party took control of the government in South Africa. Between 1948 and 1994, the apartheid regime took place. This regime based its ideology on the racial separation of whites and non-whites, including the unequal rights of non-whites. Several protests and violence occurred during the struggle against apartheid, the most famous of these include the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, the Soweto uprising in 1976, the Church Street bombing of 1983, and the Cape Town peace march of 1989.


Contemporary

During the Congo Civil War (1998–2003), Pygmy people were hunted down like game animals and eaten. Both sides in the war regarded them as "subhuman" and some say their flesh can confer magical powers. UN human rights activists reported in 2003 that rebels had carried out acts of
cannibalism Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well documented, b ...
. Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of the Mbuti pygmies, has asked the UN Security Council to recognise cannibalism as both a crime against humanity and an act of genocide. A report released by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination condemns Botswana's treatment of the '
Bushmen The San peoples (also Saan), or Bushmen, are members of various Khoe, Tuu, or Kxʼa-speaking indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures that are the first cultures of Southern Africa, and whose territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, ...
' as racist. In 2008, the tribunal of the 15-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) accused Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe of having a racist attitude towards white people. The mass demonstrations and riots against African students in Nanjing, China, lasted from December 1988 to January 1989. In November 2009, British newspaper '' The Guardian'' reported that Lou Jing, of mixed Chinese and African parentage, had emerged as the most famous talent show contestant in China and has become the subject of intense debate because of her skin color. Her attention in the media opened serious debates about
racism in China Racism in China arises from Chinese history, nationalism, sinicization, and other factors. Racism in modern China has been documented in numerous situations. Ethnic tensions have led to incidents in the country such as the Xinjiang conflict, the ...
and racial prejudice. Some 70,000 black African Mauritanians were expelled from Mauritania in the late 1980s. In the Sudan, black African captives in the civil war were often enslaved, and female prisoners were often sexually abused. The Darfur conflict has been described by some as a racial matter. In October 2006, Niger announced that it would deport the approximately 150,000 Arabs living in the Diffa region of eastern Niger to Chad. While the government collected Arabs in preparation for the deportation, two girls died, reportedly after fleeing Government forces, and three women suffered miscarriages. The Jakarta riots of May 1998 targeted many
Chinese Indonesian Chinese Indonesians ( id, Orang Tionghoa Indonesia) and colloquially Chindo or just Tionghoa are Indonesians whose ancestors arrived from China at some stage in the last eight centuries. Chinese people and their Indonesian descendants have ...
s. The anti-Chinese legislation was in the Indonesian constitution until 1998. Resentment against Chinese workers has led to violent confrontations in Africa and Oceania. Anti-Chinese rioting, involving tens of thousands of people, broke out in Papua New Guinea in May 2009. Indo-Fijians suffered violent attacks after the Fiji coup in 2000. Non-indigenous citizens of Fiji are subject to discrimination. Racial divisions also exist in Guyana, Malaysia, Trinidad and Tobago, Madagascar, and South Africa. In Malaysia such racist state policies are codified on many levels, see Bumiputera. Peter Bouckaert, the Human Rights Watch's emergencies director, said in an interview that "racist hatred" is the chief motivation behind the violence against Rohingya Muslims in
Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...
. One form of racism in the United States was enforced racial segregation, which existed until the 1960s, when it was outlawed in the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...
. It has been argued that this separation of races continues to exist ''de facto'' today in different forms, such as lack of access to loans and resources or discrimination by police and other government officials. The 2016
Pew Research The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan American think tank (referring to itself as a "fact tank") based in Washington, D.C. It provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and the wor ...
poll found that Italians, in particular, hold strong anti-Romani views, with 82% of Italians expressing negative opinions about
Romani Romani may refer to: Ethnicities * Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia ** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule * Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...
. In Greece, there are 67%, in Hungary, 64%, in France, 61%, in Spain, 49%, in Poland, 47%, in the UK, 45%, in Sweden, 42%, in Germany, 40%, and in the Netherlands, 37%, that have an unfavourable view of Roma. A survey conducted by Harvard University found the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine had the strongest racial bias against black people in Europe, while Serbia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina had the weakest racial bias, followed by Croatia and Ireland.


Scientific racism

The modern biological definition of race developed in the 19th century with scientific racist theories. The term ''scientific racism'' refers to the use of science to justify and support racist beliefs, which goes back to the early 18th century, though it gained most of its influence in the mid-19th century, during the New Imperialism period. Also known as academic racism, such theories first needed to overcome the Church's resistance to positivist accounts of history and its support of monogenism, the concept that all human beings were originated from the same ancestors, in accordance with creationist accounts of history. These racist theories put forth on scientific hypothesis were combined with unilineal theories of social progress, which postulated the superiority of the European civilization over the rest of the world. Furthermore, they frequently made use of the idea of "
survival of the fittest "Survival of the fittest" is a phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection. The biological concept of fitness is defined as reproductive success. In Darwinian terms, th ...
", a term coined by Herbert Spencer in 1864, associated with ideas of competition, which were named social Darwinism in the 1940s. Charles Darwin himself opposed the idea of rigid racial differences in '' The Descent of Man'' (1871), in which he argued that humans were all of one species, sharing common descent. He recognised racial differences as varieties of humanity, and emphasised the close similarities between people of all races in mental faculties, tastes, dispositions and habits, while still contrasting the culture of the "lowest savages" with European civilization. At the end of the 19th century, proponents of scientific racism intertwined themselves with eugenics discourses of "
degeneration Degeneracy, degenerate, or degeneration may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Degenerate'' (album), a 2010 album by the British band Trigger the Bloodshed * Degenerate art, a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to descri ...
of the race" and "blood
heredity Heredity, also called inheritance or biological inheritance, is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring; either through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or organisms acquire the genetic inform ...
". Henceforth, scientific racist discourses could be defined as the combination of polygenism, unilinealism, social Darwinism, and eugenism. They found their scientific legitimacy on
physical anthropology Biological anthropology, also known as physical anthropology, is a scientific discipline concerned with the biological and behavioral aspects of human beings, their extinct Hominini, hominin ancestors, and related non-human primates, particularly ...
, anthropometry, craniometry,
phrenology Phrenology () is a pseudoscience which involves the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits.Wihe, J. V. (2002). "Science and Pseudoscience: A Primer in Critical Thinking." In ''Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience'', pp. 195–203. C ...
, physiognomy, and others now discredited disciplines in order to formulate racist prejudices. Before being disqualified in the 20th century by the American school of
cultural anthropology Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The portma ...
(
Franz Boas Franz Uri Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the movements known as historical ...
, etc.), the British school of
social anthropology Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In t ...
(
Bronisław Malinowski Bronisław Kasper Malinowski (; 7 April 1884 – 16 May 1942) was a Polish-British anthropologist and ethnologist whose writings on ethnography, social theory, and field research have exerted a lasting influence on the discipline of anthropol ...
,
Alfred Radcliffe-Brown Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, FBA (born Alfred Reginald Brown; 17 January 1881 – 24 October 1955) was an English social anthropologist who helped further develop the theory of structural functionalism. Biography Alfred Reginald Radcli ...
, etc.), the French school of ethnology ( Claude Lévi-Strauss, etc.), as well as the discovery of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, such sciences, in particular anthropometry, were used to deduce behaviours and psychological characteristics from outward, physical appearances. The neo-Darwinian synthesis, first developed in the 1930s, eventually led to a gene-centered view of evolution in the 1960s. According to the
Human Genome Project The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying, mapping and sequencing all of the genes of the human genome from both a ...
, the most complete mapping of human DNA to date indicates that there is no clear genetic basis to racial groups. While some genes are more common in certain populations, there are no genes that exist in all members of one population and no members of any other.


Heredity and eugenics

The first theory of eugenics was developed in 1869 by
Francis Galton Sir Francis Galton, FRS FRAI (; 16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911), was an English Victorian era polymath: a statistician, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto- ...
(1822–1911), who used the then-popular concept of ''
degeneration Degeneracy, degenerate, or degeneration may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Degenerate'' (album), a 2010 album by the British band Trigger the Bloodshed * Degenerate art, a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to descri ...
''. He applied
statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ''wikt:Statistik#German, Statistik'', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of ...
to study human differences and the alleged " inheritance of intelligence", foreshadowing future uses of " intelligence testing" by the anthropometry school. Such theories were vividly described by the writer Émile Zola (1840–1902), who started publishing in 1871, a twenty-novel cycle, ''
Les Rougon-Macquart ''Les Rougon-Macquart'' is the collective title given to a cycle of twenty novels by French writer Émile Zola. Subtitled ''Histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le Second Empire'' (''Natural and social history of a family under the S ...
'', where he linked
heredity Heredity, also called inheritance or biological inheritance, is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring; either through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or organisms acquire the genetic inform ...
to behavior. Thus, Zola described the high-born Rougons as those involved in politics (''
Son Excellence Eugène Rougon ''Son Excellence Eugène Rougon'' is the sixth novel in the '' Rougon-Macquart'' series by Émile Zola. It was serialized in 1876 in '' Le Siècle'' before being published in novel form by Charpentier. It was translated into English by Brian Nels ...
'') and medicine (''
Le Docteur Pascal ''Le Docteur Pascal'' ''(Doctor Pascal)'' is the twentieth and final novel of the '' Rougon-Macquart'' series by Émile Zola, first published in June 1893 by Charpentier. Zola's plan for the ''Rougon-Macquart'' novels was to show how heredity and ...
'') and the low-born Macquarts as those fatally falling into alcoholism ('' L'Assommoir''),
prostitution Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in Sex work, sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, n ...
('' Nana''), and
homicide Homicide occurs when a person kills another person. A homicide requires only a volitional act or omission that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from accidental, reckless, or negligent acts even if there is no inten ...
(''
La Bête humaine ''La Bête humaine'' (English: ''The Beast Within'' or ''The Beast in Man'') is an 1890 novel by Émile Zola. The story has been adapted for the cinema on several occasions. The seventeenth book in Zola's ''Les Rougon-Macquart'' series, it is ba ...
''). During the rise of Nazism in Germany, some scientists in Western nations worked to debunk the regime's racial theories. A few argued against racist ideologies and discrimination, even if they believed in the alleged existence of biological races. However, in the fields of anthropology and biology, these were minority positions until the mid-20th century. According to the 1950 UNESCO statement, '' The Race Question'', an international project to debunk racist theories had been attempted in the mid-1930s. However, this project had been abandoned. Thus, in 1950, UNESCO declared that it had resumed:
...up again, after a lapse of fifteen years, a project that the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation has wished to carry through but that it had to abandon in deference to the
appeasement policy Appeasement in an international context is a diplomatic policy of making political, material, or territorial concessions to an aggressive power in order to avoid conflict. The term is most often applied to the foreign policy of the UK governme ...
of the pre-war period. The race question had become one of the pivots of Nazi ideology and policy. Masaryk and Beneš took the initiative of calling for a conference to re-establish in the minds and consciences of men everywhere the truth about race ... Nazi propaganda was able to continue its baleful work unopposed by the authority of an international organisation.
The
Third Reich's racial policies The racial policy of Nazi Germany was a set of policies and laws implemented in Nazi Germany under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, based on a specific racist doctrine asserting the superiority of the Aryan race, which claimed scientific legi ...
, its eugenics programs and the extermination of Jews in the Holocaust, as well as the Romani people in the
Porrajmos The Romani Holocaust or the Romani genocide—also known as the ''Porajmos'' (Romani pronunciation: , meaning "the Devouring"), the ''Pharrajimos'' meaning the hard times ("Cutting up", "Fragmentation", "Destruction"), and the ''Samudaripen'' (" ...
(the
Romani Holocaust The Romani Holocaust or the Romani genocide—also known as the ''Porajmos'' (Romani pronunciation: , meaning "the Devouring"), the ''Pharrajimos'' meaning the hard times ("Cutting up", "Fragmentation", "Destruction"), and the ''Samudaripen'' (" ...
) and others minorities led to a change in opinions about scientific research into race after the war. Changes within scientific disciplines, such as the rise of the
Boasian Franz Uri Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the movements known as historical ...
school of anthropology in the United States contributed to this shift. These theories were strongly denounced in the 1950 UNESCO statement, signed by internationally renowned scholars, and titled '' The Race Question''.


Polygenism and racial typologies

Works such as Arthur de Gobineau's ''An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races'' (1853–1855) may be considered one of the first theorizations of this new racism, founded on an essentialist notion of race, which opposed the former racial discourse, of
Boulainvilliers Henri de Boulainvilliers (; 21 October 1658, Saint-Saire, Normandy – 23 January 1722, Paris) was a French nobleman, writer and historian. He was educated at the College of Juilly; he served in the army until 1697. Primarily remembered as an e ...
for example, which saw in races a fundamentally historical reality, which changed over time. Gobineau, thus, attempted to frame racism within the terms of biological differences among humans, giving it the legitimacy of biology. Gobineau's theories would be expanded in France by Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854–1936)'s typology (anthropology), typology of races, who published in 1899 ''The Aryan and his Social Role'', in which he claimed that the white "Aryan race" "Cephalic index, dolichocephalic", was opposed to the "brachycephalic" race, of whom the "Jew" was the archetype. Vacher de Lapouge thus created a hierarchical classification of races, in which he identified the "''Nordic race, Homo europaeus'' (Teutonic, Protestant, etc.), the "''Homo alpinus''" (Auvergne (province), Auvergnat, Turkish people, Turkish, etc.), and finally the "''Homo mediterraneus''" (Naples, Neapolitan, Andalusia, Andalus, etc.) He assimilated races and social classes, considering that the French upper class was a representation of the ''Homo europaeus'', while the lower class represented the ''Homo alpinus''. Applying Galton's eugenics to his theory of races, Vacher de Lapouge's "selectionism" aimed first at achieving the annihilation of trade unionists, considered to be a "degenerate"; second, creating types of man each destined to one end, in order to prevent any contestation of labour conditions. His "anthroposociology" thus aimed at blocking social conflict by establishing a fixed, hierarchical social order. The same year, William Z. Ripley used identical racial classification in ''The Races of Europe (Ripley), The Races of Europe'' (1899), which would have a great influence in the United States. Other scientific authors include Houston Stewart Chamberlain, H.S. Chamberlain at the end of the 19th century (a British citizen who naturalization, naturalized himself as German because of his admiration for the "Aryan race") and Madison Grant, a eugenicist and author of ''The Passing of the Great Race'' (1916). Madison Grant provided statistics for the Immigration Act of 1924, which severely restricted immigration of Jews,
Slavs Slavs are the largest European ethnolinguistic group. They speak the various Slavic languages, belonging to the larger Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout northern Eurasia, main ...
, and Southern Europeans, who were subsequently hindered in seeking to escape Nazi Germany.


Human zoos

Human zoos (called "People Shows"), 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 Phineas Taylor Barnum, 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. Carl Hagenbeck, inventor of the modern zoos, exhibited animals beside humans who were considered "savages".Human Zoos
by Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard and Sandrine Lemaire, in ''Le Monde diplomatique'', August 200
French – free
/ref> Congolese Pygmies, 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, social Darwinist ideology that tried to ground itself in Charles Darwin, 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 Expo '58, Brussels' World Fair.


Theories about the origins of racism

Evolutionary psychologists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides were puzzled by the fact that in the US, race is one of the three characteristics most often used in brief descriptions of individuals (the others are age and sex). They reasoned that natural selection would not have favoured the evolution of an instinct for using race as a classification, because for most of human history, humans almost never encountered members of other races. Tooby and Cosmides hypothesized that modern people use race as a proxy (rough-and-ready indicator) for coalition membership, since a better-than-random guess about "which side" another person is on will be helpful if one does not actually know in advance. Their colleague Robert Kurzban designed an experiment whose results appeared to support this hypothesis. Using the memory confusion protocol, they presented subjects with pictures of individuals and sentences, allegedly spoken by these individuals, which presented two sides of a debate. The errors that the subjects made in recalling who said what indicated that they sometimes mis-attributed a statement to a speaker of the same race as the "correct" speaker, although they also sometimes mis-attributed a statement to a speaker "on the same side" as the "correct" speaker. In a second run of the experiment, the team also distinguished the "sides" in the debate by clothing of similar colors; and in this case the effect of racial similarity in causing mistakes almost vanished, being replaced by the color of their clothing. In other words, the first group of subjects, with no clues from clothing, used race as a visual guide to guessing who was on which side of the debate; the second group of subjects used the clothing color as their main visual clue, and the effect of race became very small.. The authors provide a summary and other comments at Some research suggests that ethnocentric thinking may have actually contributed to the development of cooperation. Political scientists Ross Hammond and Robert Axelrod created a computer simulation wherein virtual individuals were randomly assigned one of a variety of skin colors, and then one of a variety of trading strategies: be color-blind, favor those of your own color, or favor those of other colors. They found that the ethnocentric individuals clustered together, then grew, until all the non-ethnocentric individuals were wiped out. In ''The Selfish Gene'', evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins writes that "Blood-feuds and inter-clan warfare are easily interpretable in terms of W. D. Hamilton, Hamilton's kin selection, genetic theory." Dawkins writes that racial prejudice, while not evolutionarily adaptive, "could be interpreted as an irrational generalization of a kin-selected tendency to identify with individuals physically resembling oneself, and to be nasty to individuals different in appearance." Simulation-based experiments in evolutionary game theory have attempted to provide an explanation for the selection of ethnocentric-strategy phenotypes. Despite support for evolutionary theories relating to an innate origin of racism, various studies have suggested racism is associated with lower intelligence and less diverse peer groups during childhood. A neuroimaging study on amygdala activity during racial matching activities found increased activity to be associated with adolescent age as well as less racially diverse peer groups, which the author conclude suggest a learned aspect of racism. A meta analysis of neuroimaging studies found amygdala activity correlated to increased scores on implicit measures of racial bias. It was also argued amygdala activity in response to racial stimuli represents increased threat perception rather than the traditional theory of the amygdala activity represented ingroup-outgroup processing. Racism has also been associated with lower childhood IQ in an analysis of 15,000 people in the UK.


State-sponsored racism

State racism—the institutions and practices of a nation-state that are grounded in racist ideology—has played a major role in all instances of settler colonialism, from the United States to Australia. It also played a prominent role in the Nazi Germany, Nazi German regime, in Fascism, fascist regimes throughout Europe, and during the early years of Japan's Shōwa period. These governments advocated and implemented ideologies and policies that were racist, xenophobic, and, in the case of Nazism, genocidal. The Nuremberg Laws, Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 prohibited sexual relations between any Aryan and Jew, considering it ''Rassenschande'', "racial pollution". The Nuremberg Laws stripped all Jews, even quarter- and half-Jews (second and first degree ''Mischlings''), of their German citizenship. This meant that they had no basic citizens' rights, e.g., the the right to vote, right to vote. In 1936, Jews were banned from all professional jobs, effectively preventing them from having any influence in education, politics, higher education, and industry. On 15 November 1938, Jewish children were banned from going to normal schools. By April 1939, nearly all Jewish companies had either collapsed under financial pressure and declining profits, or had been persuaded to sell out to the Nazi government. This further reduced their rights as human beings; they were in many ways officially separated from the German populace. Similar laws existed in Bulgaria—Law for protection of the nation, The Law for protection of the nation, Hungary, Romania, and Austria. Legislative state racism is known to have been enforced by the National Party of South Africa during its Apartheid regime between 1948 and 1994. Here, a series of Apartheid legislation in South Africa, Apartheid legislation was passed through the legal systems to make it legal for white South Africans to have rights which were superior to those of non-white South Africans. Non-white South Africans were not allowed involvement in any governing matters, including voting; access to quality healthcare; the provision of basic services, including clean water; electricity; as well as access to adequate schooling. Non-white South Africans were also prevented from accessing certain public areas, from using certain public transportation, and were required to live only in certain designated areas. Non-white South Africans were taxed differently than white South Africans and they were also required to carry on them at all times additional documentation, which later became known as "dom passes", to certify their non-white South African citizenship. All of these legislative racial laws were abolished through a series of equal human rights laws which were passed at the end of the Apartheid era in the early 1990s.


Anti-racism

Anti-racism includes beliefs, actions, movements, and policies which are adopted or developed in order to oppose racism. In general, it promotes an egalitarian society in which people are not discriminated against on the basis of race. Examples of anti-racist movements include the civil rights movement, the Anti-Apartheid Movement and Black Lives Matter. Nonviolent resistance is sometimes embraced as an element of anti-racist movements, although this was not always the case. Hate crime laws, affirmative action, and bans on racist speech are also examples of government policy which is intended to suppress racism.


See also

* Afrophobia * Allport's Scale * Aporophobia * Christian Identity * Creativity (religion) * Curse and mark of Cain * Discrimination based on skin color * Environmental racism * Environmental racism in Europe * Ethnic hatred * Hipster racism * Identitarianism * Index of racism-related articles * In-group favoritism * Labeling theory * Minority stress * Nigger * Racial bias in criminal news * Racial bias on Wikipedia * Racial fetishism * Racial literacy * Racialization * Raciolinguistics * Pre-Adamite#Racist pre-Adamism, Racist pre-Adamism * Racism in horror films * Racism in the LGBT community * Reverse discrimination * Romantic racism * Social interpretations of race * Spiritual racism * Stereotype threat * Tatarophobia * Tragic mulatto * Yellow Peril


References and notes


Further reading

* Theodore W. Allen, Allen, Theodore. (1994). ''The Invention of the White Race: Volume 1'' London: Verso. * Allen, Theodore. (1997). ''The Invention of the White Race: Volume 2'' London: Verso. * 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. * Barth, Boris
nbn:de:0159-2010092173 ''Racism ''
European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2011, retrieved: November 16, 2011. * * Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2018.
Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States
'. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. * * Dain, Bruce (2002), ''A Hideous Monster of the Mind : American Race Theory in the Early Republic'', Harvard University Press, Cambridge. (18th century US racial theory) * Daniels, Jessie (1997), ''White Lies: Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality in White Supremacist Discourse'', Routledge, New York. * Daniels, Jessie (2009), ''Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights'', Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD. * Ehrenreich, Eric (2007), ''The Nazi Ancestral Proof: Genealogy, Racial Science, and the Final Solution'', Indiana University Press, Bloomington. * Ewen & Ewen (2006), "Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality", Seven Stories Press, New York. * Joe Feagin, Feagin, Joe R. (2006). ''Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression'', Routledge: New York. * Feagin, Joe R. (2009). ''Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations, 2nd Edition.''Routledge: New York. * Eliav-Feldon, Miriam, Isaac, Benjamin & Ziegler, Joseph. 2009. ''The Origins of Racism in the West'', Cambridge University Press: Cambridge
Gibson, Rich (2005) Against Racism and Irrationalism
* Graves, Joseph. (2004) ''The Race Myth'' NY: Dutton. * Ignatiev, Noel. 1995. ''How the Irish Became White'' NY: Routledge. * Isaac, Benjamin. 1995 ''The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity'' Princeton: Princeton University Press * Lentin, Alana. (2008) ''Racism: A Beginner's Guide'' Oxford: One World. * Claude Lévi-Strauss, Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1952), ''Race and History'', ( UNESCO). * * * Rocchio, Vincent F. (2000), ''Reel Racism : Confronting Hollywood's Construction of Afro-American Culture'', Westview Press. * * Smedley, Audrey. 2007. ''Race in North America: Origins and Evolution of a World View''. Boulder, CO: Westview. * (historiography of race and racism) * Pierre-André Taguieff, Taguieff, Pierre-André (1987), ''La Force du préjugé : Essai sur le racisme et ses doubles'', Tel Gallimard, La Découverte. * Leon Poliakov, Poliakov, Leon. The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalistic Ideas In Europe (Barnes & Noble Books (1996)) . * Trepagnier, Barbara. 2006. ''Silent Racism: How Well-Meaning White People Perpetuate the Racial Divide''. Paradigm Publishers. * France Winddance Twine, Twine, France Winddance (1997), ''Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil'', Rutgers University Press. * UNESCO, '' The Race Question'', 1950
Tali Farkash, "Racists among us" in Y-Net (Yediot Aharonot), "Jewish Scene" section, April 20, 2007
* Howard Winant, Winant, Howard ''The New Politics of Race'' (2004) * Winant, Howard and Michael Omi, Omi, Michael ''Racial Formation in the United States'' Routeledge (1986); Second Edition (1994). * * Wright W.D. (1998) ''"Racism Matters"'', Westport, CT: Praeger.


External links


Being a Black Male in Cuba
– By Lucia Lopez, ''Havana Times'' May 5, 2009.
Race, history and culture – Ethics – March 1996
– Extract of two articles by Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Race, Racism and the Law
– Information about race, racism and racial distinctions in the law.
RacismReview
– Created and maintained by American sociologists Joe Feagin, PhD and Jessie Daniels, PhD, provides a research-based analysis of racism.
The Impact of Racism on Child and Adolescent Health
{{Authority control Racism, Prejudice and discrimination by type Politics and race