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 onerace orethnicity over another.[1][2][3] It may also meanprejudice,discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different ethnic background.[2] Modern variants of racism are often based in social perceptions of biological differences between peoples. These views can take the form ofsocial actions, practices or beliefs, orpolitical systems in which different races are ranked as inherently superior or inferior to each other, based on presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities.[2][3] There have been attempts to legitimize racist beliefs through scientific means, such asscientific 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 asnativism,xenophobia,otherness,segregation,hierarchical ranking, andsupremacism.
While the concepts of race and ethnicity are considered to be separate in contemporarysocial 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. sharedancestry or shared behavior).Racism andracial discrimination are often used to describe discrimination on an ethnic or cultural basis, independent of whether these differences are described as racial. According to theUnited Nations'sConvention 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 isscientifically false, morally condemnable, sociallyunjust, and dangerous. The convention also declared that there is no justification for racial discrimination, anywhere, in theory or in practice.[4]
An early use of the wordracism byRichard Henry Pratt in 1902: "Association of races and classes is necessary to destroy racism andclassism."
In the 19th century, many scientists subscribed to the belief that the human population can be divided into races. The termracism 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.[10] The origin of the root word "race" is not clear. Linguists generally agree that it came to the English language fromMiddle 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 Arabicra's, which means "head, beginning, origin" or theHebrewrosh, which has a similar meaning.[11] 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.[12][13][14] These early theories guidedpseudo-scientific research assumptions; the collective endeavors to adequately define and form hypotheses about racial differences are generally termedscientific racism, though this term is a misnomer, due to the lack of any actual science backing the claims.
An entry in theOxford English Dictionary (2008) definesracialism as "[a]n earlier term than racism, but now largely superseded by it", and cites the term "racialism" in a 1902 quote.[20] The revisedOxford English Dictionary cites the shorter term "racism" in a quote from the year 1903.[21] It was defined by theOxford English Dictionary (2nd edition 1989) as "[t]he theory that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are determined by race"; the same dictionary termedracism asynonym ofracialism: "belief in the superiority of a particular race". By the end ofWorld War II,racism had acquired the same supremacist connotations formerly associated withracialism:racism by then implied racialdiscrimination, racialsupremacism, and a harmful intent. The term "race hatred" had also been used by sociologistFrederick Hertz in the late 1920s.
As its history indicates, the popular use of the wordracism is relatively recent. The word came into widespread usage in theWestern world in the 1930s, when it was used to describe the social and political ideology ofNazism, which treated "race" as a naturally given political unit.[22] 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.[12] Today, some scholars of racism prefer to use the concept in the pluralracisms, 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.[23] Garner (2009: p. 11) summarizes different existing definitions of racism and identifies three common elements contained in those definitions of racism. First, a historical, hierarchicalpower relationship between groups; second, a set of ideas (an ideology) about racial differences; and, third, discriminatory actions (practices).[12]
Legal
Though many countries around the globe have passedlaws related to race and discrimination, the first significant internationalhuman rights instrument developed by the United Nations (UN) was theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR),[24] which was adopted by theUnited Nations General Assembly in 1948. The UDHR recognizes that if people are to be treated with dignity, they requireeconomic rights,social rights including education, and the rights tocultural and political participation andcivil 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 orsocial origin, property, birth or other status".
The term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour,descent, or national orethnic 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 1978United 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."[26]
The UN definition of racial discrimination does not make any distinction betweendiscrimination based on ethnicity and race, in part because the distinction between the two has been a matter of debate amongacademics, includinganthropologists.[27] Similarly, inBritish law, the phraseracial group means "any group of people who are defined by reference to their race, colour, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origin".[28]
In Norway, the word "race" has been removed from national laws concerning discrimination because the use of the phrase is considered problematic and unethical.[29][30] The Norwegian Anti-Discrimination Act bans discrimination based on ethnicity, national origin, descent, and skin color.[31]
Sociologists, in general, recognize "race" as asocial 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.[32] 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.[33] 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 insociology andeconomics. Much of the sociological literature focuses on white racism. Some of the earliest sociological works on racism were written by sociologistW. E. B. Du Bois, the first African American to earn a doctoral degree fromHarvard University. Du Bois wrote, "[t]he problem of the twentieth century is the problem of thecolor line."[34] 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".[35] In both sociology and economics, the outcomes of racist actions are often measured by theinequality inincome,wealth,net worth, and access to other cultural resources (such as education), between racial groups.[36]
In sociology andsocial psychology,racial identity 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."[37] Sellers and Shelton (2003) found that a relationship between racial discrimination and emotional distress was moderated by racial ideology and social beliefs.[38]
Some sociologists also argue that, particularly in the West, where racism is oftennegatively 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 increasinglytaboo, even among those who display egalitarian explicit attitudes, animplicit oraversive racism is still maintained subconsciously.[39]
This process has been studied extensively in social psychology as implicit associations andimplicit attitudes, a component ofimplicit 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.[40] 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.[39] These feelings, thoughts, or actions have an influence on behavior of which the individual may not be aware.[41]
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 psychologistJennifer L. Eberhardt (2004) ofStanford University holds that, "blackness is so associated with crime you're ready to pick out these crime objects."[42] 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.[43] For example, scientists and activists have warned that the use of the stereotype "Nigerian Prince" for referring toadvance-fee scammers is racist, i.e. "reducing Nigeria to a nation of scammers and fraudulent princes, as some people still do online, is astereotype that needs to be called out".[44]
Humanities
Language,linguistics, anddiscourse are active areas of study in thehumanities, 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.[45] 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 earlyAfrican-American literature that describes the author's experiences with racism when he was traveling in theSouth 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 asUncle Tom's Cabin,To Kill a Mockingbird, andImitation of Life, or even the non-fiction workBlack Like Me. 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 inAfrican-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 dismantlewhite supremacy in the US.[46]
Popular usage
According to dictionary definitions, racism is prejudice and discrimination based on race.[47][48]
Racism can also be said to describe a condition in society in which a dominant racial group benefits from theoppression of others, whether that group wants such benefits or not.[49] 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.[50]
In popular usage, as in some academic usage, little distinction is made between "racism" and "ethnocentrism". 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.[citation needed]
Some academics use a newstipulative definition of racism, seeing racism not only in terms of individual prejudice, but also seeing it in terms of a power structure that protects the interests of the dominant culture and actively discriminates against ethnic minorities. From this newly defined perspective, racism means "Prejudice plus power".[51]
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 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.[52] 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.[52] 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.[53][54]
In relation to racism, color blindness is the disregard of racial characteristics insocial interaction, 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.[55]
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argues that color blind racism arises from an "abstractliberalism, biologization of culture, naturalization of racial matters, and minimization of racism".[56] Color blind practices are "subtle,institutional, and apparently nonracial"[57] because race is explicitly ignored in decision-making. If race is disregarded in predominantly white populations, for example, whiteness becomes thenormative standard, whereaspeople of color areothered, and the racism these individuals experience may be minimized or erased.[58][59] At an individual level, people with "color blind prejudice" reject racist ideology, but also reject systemic policies intended to fixinstitutional racism.[59]
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 withxenophobia, which is often characterized by fear of, or aggression toward, members of anoutgroup by members of aningroup.[60]In that sense it is also similar tocommunalism as used in South Asia.[61]
Cultural racism exists when there is a widespread acceptance of stereotypes concerning diverse ethnic or population groups.[62] 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.[63]
Historical economic or social disparity is alleged to be a form ofdiscrimination 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. Some view that capitalism generally transformed racism depending on local circumstances, but racism is not necessary for capitalism.[64]Economic discrimination may lead to choices that perpetuate racism. For example, color photographic film was tuned for white skin[65] as are automatic soap dispensers[66] andfacial recognition systems.[67]
African-American university studentVivian Malone entering theUniversity of Alabama in the U.S. to register for classes as one of the first African-American students to attend the institution. Until 1963, the university wasracially segregated and African-American students were not allowed to attend.
Institutional racism (also known asstructural 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 phraseinstitutional 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".[68]
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".[69]
Institutional racism refers to racism in terms of a power structure that protects the interests of the dominant culture and actively discriminates against ethnic minorities, not only in terms of individual prejudice or formal discrimination.[70][71]
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.[72]
Othering plays a fundamental role in the history and continuation of racism. Toobjectify 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.[73] By making thesegeneralizations and othering the East, Europe was simultaneously defining herself as the norm, further entrenching the gap.[74]
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".[73] Imagined differences serve to categorize people into groups and assign them characteristics that suit the imaginer's expectations.[75]
Racial segregation is the separation of humans intosocially-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.[76] Segregation is generally outlawed, but may exist through social norms, even when there is no strong individual preference for it, as suggested byThomas Schelling's models of segregation and subsequent work.
In 1899Uncle Sam (a personification of the United States) balances his new possessions which are depicted as savage children. The figures are Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Cuba, Philippines and "Ladrones" (theMariana Islands).
Centuries ofEuropean colonialism in the Americas, Africa and Asia were often justified bywhite supremacist attitudes.[77] During the early 20th century, the phrase "The White Man's Burden" was widely used to justify animperialist policy as a noble enterprise.[78][79] A justification for the policy of conquest and subjugation ofNative Americans emanated from the stereotyped perceptions of the indigenous people as "merciless Indian savages", as they are described in theUnited States Declaration of Independence.[80] Sam Wolfson ofThe Guardian writes that "the declaration's passage has often been cited as an encapsulation of thedehumanizing attitude toward indigenous Americans that the US was founded on."[81] In an 1890 article about colonial expansion onto Native American land, authorL. 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."[82] In hisNotes 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."[83] Attitudes ofblack supremacy,Arab supremacy, andEast Asian supremacy also exist.
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.[84] 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.[85][86][87] 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 ofmicro-aggression toward and/or avoidance of people of other races.[88]
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.[89]
International law and racial discrimination
In 1919, aproposal to include a racial equality provision in theCovenant of the League of Nations was supported by a majority, but not adopted in theParis Peace Conference in 1919. In 1943, Japan and its allies declared work for the abolition of racial discrimination to be their aim at theGreater East Asia Conference.[90] Article 1 of the 1945UN Charter includes "promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race" as UN purpose.
... 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, theEuropean Union explicitly banned racism, along with many other forms of social discrimination, in theCharter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, the legal effect of which, if any, would necessarily be limited toInstitutions of the European Union: "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."[94]
Racism existed during the 19th century asscientific racism, which attempted to provide aracial classification of humanity.[95] In 1775Johann 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 thepolygenist view, which held that the different races had been separately created. PolygenistChristoph Meiners (1747 – May 1810) 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 (1796–1860) demonstrated that neither Europeans nor others are one "pure race", but of mixed origins. Whilediscredited, derivations of Blumenbach's taxonomy arestill widely used for the classification of the population in the United States.Hans Peder Steensby, 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 theAustralian Aboriginals.[96]
A sign on aracially segregated beach duringApartheid in South Africa, stating that the area is for the "sole use of members of the white race group"
Although afterWorld War II andthe Holocaust, racist ideologies were discredited on ethical, political and scientific grounds, racism andracial 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".[97] Late 19th century nationalists were the first to embrace contemporary discourses on "race", ethnicity, and "survival of the fittest" 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.[98] 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 ofNordicism, the denomination "Germanic" was equivalent to superiority of race.
Bolstered by somenationalist andethnocentric 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: "[r]acism does not originate from the existence of 'races'. Itcreates them through a process of social division into categories: anybody can be racialised, independently of their somatic, cultural, religious differences."[99]
This definition explicitly ignores the biological concept of race, which is still subject to scientific debate. In the words ofDavid C. Rowe, "[a] 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."[100]
Racial prejudice became subject to international legislation. For instance, theDeclaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 November 1963, addresses racial prejudice explicitly next to discrimination for reasons of race, colour or ethnic origin (Article I).[101]
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 asxenophobia andethnocentrism, although scholars attempt to clearly distinguish those phenomena from racism as anideology 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 andnationalism were harnessed in order to rallycombatants 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 inethnic conflicts. 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 bymoral orethical 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".[102]Basil Davidson 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.
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 theRomantic nationalist movement at the turn of the 19th century, represented by figures such asJohann Herder (1744–1803),Johan Fichte (1762–1814) in theAddresses to the German Nation (1808),Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), or also, in France,Jules Michelet (1798–1874). It was opposed toliberal nationalism, represented by authors such asErnest Renan (1823–1892), who conceived of the nation as a community, which, instead of being based on theVolk ethnic group and on a specific, common language, was founded on the subjective will to live together ("the nation is a dailyplebiscite", 1882) or alsoJohn Stuart Mill (1806–1873).[106]Ethnic nationalism blended with scientific racist discourses, as well as with "continentalimperialist" (Hannah Arendt, 1951[107]) discourses, for example in thepan-Germanism discourses, which postulated the racial superiority of the GermanVolk (people/folk). ThePan-German League (Alldeutscher Verband), created in 1891, promotedGerman imperialism and "racial hygiene", and was opposed to intermarriage withJews. Another popular current, theVölkisch movement, was also an important proponent of theGerman ethnic nationalist discourse, and it combined Pan-Germanism with modernracial antisemitism. Members of the Völkisch movement, in particular theThule Society, would participate in the founding of theGerman Workers' Party (DAP) in Munich in 1918, the predecessor of theNazi Party. Pan-Germanism played a decisive role in theinterwar period of the 1920s–1930s.[107]
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 justifyingethnic cleansing, 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 offar-right movements in France, took place during theDreyfus Affair at the end of the 19th century. During several years, a nationwide crisis affected French society, concerning the alleged treason ofAlfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish military officer. The country polarized itself into two opposite camps, one represented byÉmile Zola, who wroteJ'Accuse…! in defense of Alfred Dreyfus, and the other represented by the nationalist poet,Maurice Barrès (1862–1923), one of the founders of the ethnic nationalist discourse in France.[108] At the same time,Charles Maurras (1868–1952), founder of the monarchistAction 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 pejorativemétèques). Indeed, to him the first three were all "internal foreigners", who threatened the ethnic unity of theFrench people.
Bernard Lewis has cited theGreek philosopherAristotle who, in his discussion of slavery, stated that while Greeks are free by nature, "barbarians" (non-Greeks) are slaves by nature, in that it is in their nature to be more willing to submit to adespotic government.[110] 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 fromGreece.[111] 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.[112] The modern version of racism based on the idea ofhereditary inferiority had not yet been developed, and Aristotle never explicitly stated whether he believed the supposed natural inferiority of Barbarians was caused by environment and climate (like many of his contemporaries) or by birth.[113]
Historian Dante A. Puzzo, in his discussion of Aristotle, racism, and the ancient world writes that:[114]
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 andethnocentrism ... The AncientHebrews, in referring to all who were not Hebrews asGentiles, were indulging in ethnocentrism, not in racism. ... So it was with theHellenes who denominated all non-Hellenes—whether the wildScythians or theEgyptians whom they acknowledged as their mentors in the arts ofcivilization—Barbarians, the term denoting that which was strange or foreign.
Early antisemitism
Some scholars suggest that anti-Jewish policies under theHellenistic empires and theRoman Empire constitute examples of ancient racism.[115][116][117] Other scholars have criticized this view as based on an ahistorical conception of race,[118] and argued that such policies were aimed at repressing a religious group resistant to imperialism and conformity rather than a racialized entity.[119][120]
...beyond [known peoples of black West Africa] 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 toWesleyan University professor Abdelmajid Hannoum, FrenchOrientalists projected racist andcolonialist views of the 19th century into their translations of medieval Arabic writings, including those of Ibn Khaldun. This resulted in the translated textsracializing Arabs andBerber people, when no such distinction was made in the originals.[127] James E. Lindsay argues that the concept of anArab identity itself did not exist until modern times,[128] though others likeRobert Hoyland have argued that a common sense ofArab identity already existed by the 9th century.[129]
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 awhite 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 ArabicMoors and most of theSephardic Jews from theIberian peninsula, the remainingJews andMuslims were forced toconvert to Roman Catholicism, becoming "New Christians", who were sometimes discriminated against by the "Old Christians" in some cities (includingToledo), despite condemnations by the Church and the State, which both welcomed the new flock.[133] TheInquisition was carried out by members of theDominican Order in order to weed out the converts who still practicedJudaism andIslam in secret. The system and ideology of thelimpieza de sangre ostracized false Christian converts from society in order to protect it againsttreason.[135] The remnants of such legislation persevered into the 19th century in military contexts.[136]
InPortugal, the legal distinction between New and Old Christian was only ended through a legal decree issued by theMarquis of Pombal in 1772, almost three centuries after the implementation of the racist discrimination. Thelimpieza de sangre legislation was common also during thecolonization 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.[137]
At the end of theRenaissance, theValladolid debate (1550–1551), concerning the treatment of thenatives of the "New World" pitted the Dominican friar and Bishop of Chiapas,Bartolomé de Las Casas, to another Dominican and Humanistphilosopher,Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. The latter argued that theIndians practicedhuman sacrifice of innocents,cannibalism, and other such "crimes against nature"; they were unacceptable and should be suppressed by any means possible including war,[138] thus reducing them to slavery or serfdom was in accordance with Catholic theology andnatural 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 toCatholic theology. 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.[139] 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.[140]
In the Spanish colonies, Spaniards developed a complexcaste system based on race, which was used for social control, and which also determined a person's importance in society.[141] 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.[142]
Racism as a modern phenomenon
Racism is frequently described as amodern phenomenon. In the view of the French philosopher and historianMichel Foucault, the first formulation of racism emerged in theEarly Modern period as the "discourse of race struggle", and a historical and political discourse, which Foucault opposed to the philosophical and juridical discourse ofsovereignty.[143]
This European discourse, which first appeared inGreat Britain, was then carried on inFrance by such people asBoulainvilliers (1658–1722),Nicolas Fréret (1688–1749), and then, during the 1789French Revolution,Sieyès, and afterwards,Augustin Thierry andCournot. Boulainvilliers, who created the matrix of such racist discourse in 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 unifiednation-state is ananachronism here—which themselves formed different "races". Boulainvilliers opposed theabsolute monarchy, which tried to bypass thearistocracy by establishing a direct relationship to theThird 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, vanquishedGallo-Romans, who were dominated by the Frankish aristocracy as a consequence of theright of conquest. Early modern racism was opposed to nationalism and the nation-state: theComte de Montlosier, in exile during theFrench 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
Advertisement forPears' Soap Caption reads, "Matchless for the complexion..." Illustration of 'before and after' use of soap by black child in the bath; soap washes off his dark complexion.
While 19th-century racism became closely intertwined with nationalism,[144] leading to theethnic nationalist discourse that identified the "race" with the "folk", leading to such movements aspan-Germanism,pan-Turkism,pan-Arabism, andpan-Slavism, medieval racism precisely divided the nation into various non-biological "races", which were thought to be the consequence of historical conquests andsocial 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 andeugenicists, 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 realengine of history and continued to act underneath the apparent peace. Thus, Marxists transformed theessentialist notion of "race" into the historical notion of "class struggle", defined by socially structured positions: capitalist or proletarian. InThe Will to Knowledge (1976), Foucault analyzed another opponent of the "race struggle" discourse:Sigmund Freud'spsychoanalysis, which opposed the concept of "bloodheredity", prevalent in the 19th century racist discourse.
Authors such asHannah Arendt, in her 1951 bookThe Origins of Totalitarianism, have said that the racist ideology (popular racism) which developed at the end of the 19th century helped legitimize theimperialist conquests of foreign territories and the atrocities that sometimes accompanied them (such as theHerero and Namaqua Genocide of 1904–1907 or theArmenian 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 theEuropean 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.
A late-19th-century illustration fromIreland from One or Two Neglected Points of View by H. Strickland Constable shows an alleged similarity between "Irish Iberian" and "Negro" features in contrast to the "higher" "Anglo-Teutonic".
However, during the 19th century, Western European colonial powers were involved in the suppression of theArab slave trade in Africa,[145] as well as in the suppression of theslave trade in West Africa.[146] Some Europeans during the time period objected to injustices that occurred in some colonies and lobbied on behalf ofaboriginal peoples. Thus, when theHottentot 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 publishedHeart of Darkness (1899), a clear criticism of theCongo Free State, which was owned byLeopold II of Belgium.
Examples of racial theories used include the creation of theHamitic theory during theEuropean exploration of Africa. The termHamite was applied to different populations within North Africa, mainly comprising Ethiopians,Eritreans,Somalis,Berbers, 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.[147][148][149] Europeans considered Hamites to be more civilized thanSub-Saharan Africans, and more akin to themselves andSemitic peoples.[150] In the first two-thirds of the 20th century, the Hamitic race was, in fact, considered one of the branches of theCaucasian race, along with theIndo-Europeans,Semites, and theMediterraneans.
However, the Hamitic peoples themselves were often deemed to have failed as rulers, which was usually ascribed tointerbreeding withNegroes. In the mid-20th century, the German scholarCarl Meinhof (1857–1944) claimed that theBantu race was formed by a merger ofHamitic andNegro races. The Hottentots (Nama orKhoi) were formed by the merger of Hamitic andBushmen (San) races—both being termed nowadays asKhoisan peoples.
In the United States in the early 19th century, theAmerican Colonization Society was established as the primary vehicle for proposals to return black Americans to greater freedom and equality in Africa.[151] The colonization effort resulted from a mixture of motives with its founderHenry Clay 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".[152] 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 5 June 1873, SirFrancis Galton, distinguished English explorer and cousin of Charles Darwin, wrote in a letter toThe Times:
My proposal is to make the encouragement ofChinese settlements of Africa a part of our national policy, in the belief that the Chinese immigrants would not only maintain their position, but that they would multiply and their descendants supplant the inferior Negro race ... I should expect that the African seaboard, now sparsely occupied by lazy, palavering savages, might in a few years be tenanted by industrious, order-loving Chinese, living either as a semidetached dependency of China, or else in perfect freedom under their own law.[153]
Austrian Nazis and local residents watch as Jews are forced to scrub the pavement, Vienna, March 1938Eichmann's list of the Jewish population in Europe, drafted for theWannsee Conference, held to ensure the cooperation of various levels of the Nazi government in theFinal Solution
The Nazi party, which seized power in the1933 German elections and maintained a dictatorship over much of Europe until theEnd 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.[154]
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 theEnglish as well as other peoples such as some northern Italians and the French, who were said to have a suitable admixture of Germanic blood.[155] Nazi policies labeledRomani people,people of color, andSlavs (mainlyPoles,Serbs,Russians,Belarusians,Ukrainians andCzechs) as inferior non-Aryan subhumans.[156][157] Jews were at the bottom of the hierarchy, considered inhuman and thusunworthy of life.[157][158][159][160][161][162][163] In accordance with Nazi racial ideology, approximately six million Jews were killed in theHolocaust. 2.5 millionethnic Poles, 0.5 millionethnic Serbs and 0.2–0.5 millionRomani were killed by the regime and its collaborators.[164]
The Nazis considered mostSlavs to be non-AryanUntermenschen. The Nazi Party's chief racial theorist,Alfred Rosenberg, adopted the term fromKlansmanLothrop Stoddard's 1922 bookThe Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man.[165] In the secret planGeneralplan Ost ("Master Plan East") the Nazis resolved to expel, enslave, or exterminate most Slavic people to provide "living space" for Germans,[166] but Nazi policy towards Slavs changed during World War II due to manpower shortages which necessitated limited Slavic participation in theWaffen-SS.[167] Significant war crimes were committed against Slavs, particularlyPoles, andSoviet 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 millionRed Army POWs, whom they viewed as "subhuman".[168]
In the years 1943–1945, around 120,000 Polish people, mostly women and children, became the victims ofethnicity-based massacres by theUkrainian Insurgent Army, which was then operating in the territory ofoccupied Poland.[169] 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.[170]
During the intensification of ties with Nazi Germany in the 1930s,Ante Pavelić and theUstaše and their idea of theCroatian nation became increasingly race-oriented.[171][172][173] The Ustaše view of national and racial identity, as well as the theory ofSerbs as an inferior race, was influenced byCroatian nationalists and intellectuals from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.[171][174][175][176] Serbs were primary targets of racial laws and murders in the puppetIndependent State of Croatia (NDH); Jews and Roma were also targeted.[177] The Ustaše introduced laws to strip Serbs of their citizenship, livelihoods, and possessions.[178] During thegenocide 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.[179][180][173]
German praise for America's institutional racism was continuous throughout the early 1930s, and Nazi lawyers were advocates of the use of American models.[181] Race based U.S. citizenship laws andanti-miscegenation laws (no race mixing) directly inspired the Nazi's two principalNuremberg racial laws—the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law.[181] Hitler's 1925 memoirMein Kampf was full of admiration for America's treatment of "coloreds".[182] Nazi expansion eastward was accompanied with invocation of America's colonial expansion westward, with the accompanying actions toward the Native Americans.[183] 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."[184] On Nazi Germany's expansion eastward, in 1941 Hitler stated, "Our Mississippi [the line beyond which Thomas Jefferson wanted all Indians expelled] must be the Volga."[183]
A sign posted above a bar that reads "No beer sold to Indians [Native Americans]".Birney, Montana, 1941.
White supremacy was dominant in the U.S. from its founding up to thecivil rights movement.[185] On the U.S. immigration laws prior to 1965, sociologist Stephen Klineberg cited the law as clearly declaring "thatNorthern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the white race."[186] While anti-Asian racism was embedded in U.S. politics and culture in the early 20th century,Indians were also racialized for their anticolonialism, with U.S. officials, casting them as a "Hindu" menace, pushing for Western imperial expansion abroad.[187] TheNaturalization Act of 1790 limited U.S. citizenship to whites only, and in the 1923 case,United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the Supreme Court ruled that high caste Hindus were not "white persons" and were therefore racially ineligible for naturalized citizenship.[188][189] It was after theLuce–Celler Act of 1946 that a quota of 100 Indians per year could immigrate to the U.S. and become citizens.[190] TheImmigration and Nationality Act of 1965 dramatically opened entry to the U.S. to immigrants other than traditional Northern European andGermanic groups, and as a result would significantly alter the demographic mix in the U.S.[186]
Seriousrace riots in Durban betweenIndians andZulus erupted in 1949.[191]Ne Win's rise to power in Burma in 1962 and his relentless persecution of "resident aliens" led to an exodus of some 300,000Burmese Indians.[192] They migrated to escaperacial discrimination and wholesale nationalisation of private enterprises a few years later, in 1964.[193] TheZanzibar Revolution of 12 January 1964, put an end to the localArab dynasty.[194] Thousands of Arabs and Indians in Zanzibar were massacred in riots, and thousands more were detained or fled the island.[195] In August 1972, Ugandan PresidentIdi Amin started the expropriation of properties owned by Asians and Europeans.[196][197] In the same year, Amin ethnically cleansedUganda's Asians, giving them 90 days to leave the country.[198] Shortly after World War II, the South AfricanNational Party took control of the government in South Africa. Between 1948 and 1994, theapartheid 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 thestruggle against apartheid, the most famous of these include theSharpeville Massacre in 1960, theSoweto uprising in 1976, theChurch Street bombing of 1983, and theCape Town peace march of 1989.[199]
Contemporary
On 12 September 2011,Julius Malema, the youth leader of South Africa's rulingANC, was found guilty of hate speech for singing "Shoot the Boer" at a number of public events.[200]
During theCongo 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 ofcannibalism. Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of theMbuti pygmies, has asked theUN Security Council to recognise cannibalism as both acrime against humanity and an act ofgenocide.[201] A report released by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination condemnsBotswana's treatment of the 'Bushmen' as racist.[202] In 2008, the tribunal of the 15-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) accused Zimbabwean PresidentRobert Mugabe of having a racist attitude towards white people.[203][204]
Themass demonstrations and riots against African students inNanjing, China, lasted from December 1988 to January 1989.[205] In November 2009, British newspaperThe Guardian reported thatLou 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.[206] Her attention in the media opened serious debates aboutracism in China and racial prejudice.[207]
Some 70,000 black African Mauritanians were expelled from Mauritania in the late 1980s.[208] In the Sudan, black African captives in the civil war were oftenenslaved, and female prisoners were often sexually abused.[209] TheDarfur conflict has been described by some as a racial matter.[210] In October 2006, Niger announced that it would deport the approximately 150,000[211] Arabs living in theDiffa region of eastern Niger to Chad.[212] While the government collected Arabs in preparation for thedeportation, two girls died, reportedly after fleeing Government forces, and three women suffered miscarriages.[213]
The burnt out remains of Govinda's Indian Restaurant inFiji, May 2000
One form of racism in the United States was enforcedracial segregation, which existed until the 1960s, when it was outlawed in theCivil Rights Act of 1964. It has been argued that this separation of races continues to existde facto today in different forms, such as lack of access to loans and resources or discrimination by police and other government officials.[233][234]
The 2016Pew Research poll found that Italians, in particular, hold stronganti-Romani views, with 82% of Italians expressing negative opinions aboutRomani. 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.[235] A survey conducted byHarvard 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.[236][237]
A 2023University of Cambridge survey which featured the largest sample of Black people in Britain found that 88% had reported racial discrimination at work, 79% believed the police unfairly targeted black people withstop and search powers and 80% definitely or somewhat agreed that the biggest barrier to academic attainment for young Black students wasracial discrimination in education.[238]
The modern biological definition of race developed in the 19th century with scientific racist theories. The termscientific 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 theNew Imperialism period. Also known as academic racism, such theories first needed to overcome theChurch's resistance topositivist accounts of history and its support ofmonogenism, the concept that all human beings were originated from the same ancestors, in accordance withcreationist accounts of history.
These racist theories put forth on scientific hypothesis were combined withunilineal 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", a term coined byHerbert Spencer in 1864, associated with ideas of competition, which were namedsocial Darwinism in the 1940s.Charles Darwin himself opposed the idea of rigid racial differences inThe 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.[239][240]
At the end of the 19th century, proponents of scientific racism intertwined themselves witheugenics discourses of "degeneration of the race" and "bloodheredity".[citation needed] Henceforth, scientific racist discourses could be defined as the combination of polygenism, unilinealism, social Darwinism, and eugenism. They found their scientific legitimacy onphysical anthropology,anthropometry,craniometry,phrenology,physiognomy, and others now discredited disciplines in order to formulate racist prejudices.
The neo-Darwinian synthesis, first developed in the 1930s, eventually led to agene-centered view of evolution in the 1960s. According to theHuman Genome Project, the most complete mapping of human DNA to date indicates that there is no cleargenetic 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.[241]
During the rise ofNazism 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.[242] 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 theInternational Committee on Intellectual Cooperation has wished to carry through but that it had to abandon in deference to theappeasement policy of the pre-war period. The race question had become one of the pivots ofNazi ideology and policy.Masaryk andBeneš 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.
TheThird Reich's racial policies, itseugenics programs and the extermination of Jews inthe Holocaust, as well as theRomani people in thePorrajmos (theRomani Holocaust) and others minorities led to a change in opinions about scientific research into race after the war.[citation needed] Changes within scientific disciplines, such as the rise of theBoasian 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 titledThe Race Question.
Madison Grant's map, from 1916, charting the "present distribution of European races", with theNordics in red, theAlpines in green, and theMediterraneans in yellow
Works such asArthur de Gobineau'sAn 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, ofBoulainvilliers 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 ofbiology.
Gobineau's theories would be expanded in France byGeorges Vacher de Lapouge (1854–1936)'stypology of races, who published in 1899The Aryan and his Social Role, in which he claimed that the white "Aryan race" "dolichocephalic", was opposed to the "brachycephalic" race, of whom the "Jew" was the archetype. Vacher de Lapouge thus created ahierarchical classification of races, in which he identified the "Homo europaeus (Teutonic, Protestant, etc.), the "Homo alpinus" (Auvergnat,Turkish, etc.), and finally the "Homo mediterraneus" (Neapolitan,Andalus, etc.) He assimilated races andsocial classes, considering that the French upper class was a representation of theHomo europaeus, while the lower class represented theHomo alpinus. Applying Galton's eugenics to his theory of races, Vacher de Lapouge's "selectionism" aimed first at achieving the annihilation oftrade unionists, considered to be a "degenerate"; second, creating types of man each destined to one end, in order to prevent any contestation oflabour conditions. His "anthroposociology" thus aimed at blockingsocial conflict by establishing a fixed, hierarchical social order.[243]
The same year,William Z. Ripley used identical racial classification inThe Races of Europe (1899), which would have a great influence in the United States. Other scientific authors includeH.S. Chamberlain at the end of the 19th century (a British citizen whonaturalized himself as German because of his admiration for the "Aryan race") andMadison Grant, a eugenicist and author ofThe Passing of the Great Race (1916). Madison Grant provided statistics for theImmigration Act of 1924, which severely restricted immigration of Jews,Slavs, and Southern Europeans, who were subsequently hindered in seeking to escape Nazi Germany.[244]
Human zoos
Human zoos (called "People Shows"), were an important means of bolsteringpopular racism by connecting it to scientific racism: they were both objects of public curiosity and ofanthropology andanthropometry.[245][246]Joice Heth, an African-American slave, was displayed byP.T. Barnum in 1836, a few years after the exhibition ofSaartjie 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".[247][248]
Evolutionary psychologistsJohn Tooby andLeda 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 thatnatural 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 colleagueRobert Kurzban designed an experiment whose results appeared to support this hypothesis. Using thememory 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.[250]
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.[251]
InThe Selfish Gene, evolutionary biologistRichard Dawkins writes that "Blood-feuds and inter-clan warfare are easily interpretable in terms ofHamilton'sgenetic 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."[252] Simulation-based experiments inevolutionary game theory have attempted to provide an explanation for the selection of ethnocentric-strategy phenotypes.[253]
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.[254] 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.[255] Racism has also been associated with lower childhood IQ in an analysis of 15,000 people in the UK.[256]
Psychological causes
A 2017 study in theAmerican Political Science Review found that prejudice towards marginalized groups, such as refugees, could be explained by a failure to take the perspective of the marginalized group.[257] The study found that young Hungarian adults who played a perspective-taking game (a game intended to reduce prejudice towards marginalized groups by having players assume the role of a member of a marginalized group) showed reduced prejudice towards Romani people and refugees, as well as reduced their vote intentions for Hungary's overtly racist, far right party by 10%.[257]
State racism—the institutions and practices of a nation-state that are grounded in racist ideology—has played a major role in all instances ofsettler colonialism, from the United States to Australia.[citation needed] It also played a prominent role in theNazi German regime, infascist regimes throughout Europe, and during the early years of Japan'sShōwa period. These governments advocated and implemented ideologies and policies that were racist, xenophobic, and, in the case ofNazism, genocidal.[258][259]
TheNuremberg Race Laws of 1935 prohibited sexual relations between any Aryan and Jew, considering itRassenschande, "racial pollution". The Nuremberg Laws stripped all Jews, even quarter- and half-Jews (second and first degreeMischlings), of their German citizenship. This meant that they had no basic citizens' rights, e.g., theright 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 (The Law for protection of the nation), Hungary, Romania, and Austria.
Legislative state racism is known to have been enforced by theNational Party of South Africa during itsApartheid regime between 1948 and 1994. Here, a series ofApartheid 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 equalhuman rights laws which were passed at the end of the Apartheid era in the early 1990s.
Separate "white" and "colored" entrances to a café inNorth Carolina, 1940
1935 Chart from Nazi Germany used to explain theNuremberg Laws, defining which Germans were to be considered Jews and stripped of their citizenship. Germans with three or more Jewish grandparents were defined as Jews, Germans with one or two Jewish grandparents were deemedMischling (mixed-blood).
Demonstration against racism inHelsinki, Finland 2023
Anti-racism includes beliefs, actions, scholarship,movements, andpolicies 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 thecivil rights movement, theAnti-Apartheid Movement andBlack Lives Matter.Socialist groups have also been closely aligned with a number of anti-racist organizations such asAnti-Nazi League[260] andUnite Against Fascism.[261]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.
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.[70][71] This concept has been used especially in the United States in debates overcolor-conscious policies (such asaffirmative action) intended to remedy racial inequalities.[262] However, many experts and other commenters view reverse racism as a myth rather than a reality.[263][264][265][266] From thesubstantive equality 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 the "Prejudice plus power" definition of racism.[1][70][267]Martha Minow refers to the differences betweenformal equality of opportunity andsubstantive equality as the Dilemma of difference.[268] According toRichard Arneson affirmative action violates formal equality of opportunity.[269]
^abcDennis, R. M. (2004)."Racism". In Kuper, A.; Kuper, J. (eds.).The Social Science Encyclopedia, Volume 2 (3rd ed.). London; New York:Routledge.ISBN978-1-134-35969-1.Racism [is] the idea that there is a direct correspondence between a group's values, behavior and attitudes, and its physical features ... Racism is also a relatively new idea: its birth can be traced to the European colonization of much of the world, the rise and development of European capitalism, and the development of the European and US slave trade.
^abcGhani, Navid (2008)."Racism". In Schaefer, Richard T. (ed.).Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society. Sage. pp. 1113–1115.ISBN978-1-4129-2694-2.
^abNewman, David M. (2012).Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life (9th ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications. p. 405.ISBN978-1-4129-8729-5.Racism: Belief that humans are subdivided into distinct groups that are different in their social behavior and innate capacities and that can be ranked as superior or inferior.
^Lieberman, Leonard (1997).""Race" 1997 and 2001: A Race Odyssey"(PDF).American Anthropological Association. p. 2. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 3 April 2024.In the period since 1492, European overseas empires and colonies were established ... The establishment of mines and plantations enriched Europe while impoverishing and decimating the conquered and enslaved peoples in Africa and the New World. The race concept helped to give all this the appearance of scientific justification.
^Metraux, A. (1950). "United nations Economic and Security Council Statement by Experts on Problems of Race".American Anthropologist.53 (1):142–145.doi:10.1525/aa.1951.53.1.02a00370.
^Cazenave, Noel A. & Maddern, Darlene Alvarez (1999). "Defending the White Race: White Male Faculty Opposition to a White Racism Course".Race and Society.2 (1):25–50.doi:10.1016/s1090-9524(00)00003-6.
^Van Dijk, Tuen (1992).Analyzing Racism Through Discourse Analysis Some Methodological Reflections in Race and Ethnicity in Research Methods. Newbury Park, CA:SAGE Publications. pp. 92–134.ISBN978-0-8039-5007-8.
^Parker, Laurence (1999).Race Is – Race Isn't: Critical Race Theory and Qualitative Studies in Education. Westview Press. p. 184.ISBN978-0-8133-9069-7.
^Miller, Stuart Creighton (1984).Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903.Yale University Press. p. 5.ISBN978-0-300-03081-5.... imperialist editors came out in favor of retaining the entire archipelago (using) higher-sounding justifications related to the "white man's burden".
^Brief, A. P.; Dietz, J.; Cohen, R. R.; Pugh, S. D.; Vaslow, J. B. (2000). "Just doing business: Modern racism and obedience to authority as explanations for employment discrimination".Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.81 (1):72–97.CiteSeerX10.1.1.201.4044.doi:10.1006/obhd.1999.2867.PMID10631069.
^McConahay, J. B. (1986).Modern racism, ambivalence, and the modern racism scale.
^Pettigrew, T. F. (1989). "The nature of modern racism in the United States".Revue Internationale de Psychologie Sociale.
^Fredrickson, George M. 1988.The Arrogance of Race: Historical Perspectives on Slavery, Racism, and Social Inequality. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press
^UN General Assembly,Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10 December 1948, 217 A (III), available at:[1] [accessed 18 July 2012]
^On this "nationalities question" and the problem of nationalism, see the relevant articles for a non-exhaustive account of the state of contemporary historical researches; famous works include:Ernest Gellner,Nations and Nationalism (1983);Eric Hobsbawm,The Age of Revolution : Europe 1789–1848 (1962),Nations and Nationalism since 1780 : programme, myth, reality (1990);Benedict Anderson,Imagined Communities (1991);Charles Tilly,Coercion, Capital and European States AD 990–1992 (1990);Anthony D. Smith,Theories of Nationalism (1971), etc.
^Tcherikover, Victor,Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews, New York: Atheneum, 1975
^Bohak, Gideon. "The Ibis and the Jewish Question: Ancient 'Antisemitism' in Historical Context" in Menachem Mor et al.,Jews and Gentiles in the Holy Land in the Days of the Second Temple, the Mishna and the Talmud, Yad Ben-Zvi Press, 2003, pp. 27–43.
^El Hamel, Chouki (2002). "'Race', slavery and Islam in Maghribi Mediterranean thought: the question of the Haratin in Morocco".The Journal of North African Studies.7 (3): 29–52 [39–40].doi:10.1080/13629380208718472.S2CID219625829.Neither in the Qur'an nor in theHadith is there any indication of racial difference among humankind. But as a consequence of the Arab conquests, a mutual assimilation betweenIslam and the cultural and the scriptural traditions of Christian and Jewish populations occurred. Racial distinctions between humankind with reference to thesons of Noah is found in theBabylonian Talmud, a collection of rabbinic writings which dates back to the sixth century.
^Avrum Ehrlich, Mark (2009).Encyclopedia of the Jewish diaspora: origins, experiences, and culture.ABC-CLIO. p. 689.ISBN978-1-85109-873-6.
^Ginés de Sepúlveda, Juan (trans. Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo and Manuel Garcia-Pelayo) (1941).Tratado sobre las Justas Causas de la Guerra contra los Indios. Mexico D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica. p. 155.
^Maggie Montesinos Sale (1997).The Slumbering Volcano: American Slave Ship Revolts and the Production of Rebellious Masculinity. p. 264.Duke University Press, 1997
^Galton, Francis (9 June 1873)."Africa for the Chinese".The London and China Telegraph. Vol. 15, no. 510. London.
^Davies, Norman (2006).Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory. Macmillan Pubs (pp. 167, 4).
^Operation Barbarossa: Ideology and Ethics against Human Dignity, by André Mineau, (Rodopi, 2004) p. 180
^abMastný, Vojtěch (1971).The Czechs under Nazi Rule: The Failure of National Resistance, 1939–1942. Columbia University Press.ISBN0231033036.[page needed]
^Historical Dictionary of the Holocaust, p. 175 Jack R. Fischel. 2010. The policy ofLebensraum was also the product of Nazi racial ideology, which held that the Slavic peoples of the east were inferior to the Aryan race.
^Hitler's Home Front: Wurttemberg Under the Nazis, Jill Stephenson p. 135, Other non-'Aryans' included Slavs, Blacks and Roma.
^Race Relations Within Western Expansion, p. 98 Alan J. Levine. 1996. Preposterously, Central European Aryan theorists, and later the Nazis, would insist that the Slavic-speaking peoples were not really Aryans
^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)
^Pauwels, Jacques R.The Great Class War 1914–1918. Formac Publishing Company Limited. p. 88.
^Gumkowski, Janusz; Leszczynski, Kazimierz (1961).Hitler's Plans for Eastern Europe. Poland Under Nazi Occupation. Translated by Rothert, Edward (First ed.). Polonia Pub. House.OCLC750570006.
^Norman Davies.Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory. pp. 167, 209.
^Daniel Goldhagen,Hitler's Willing Executioners (p. 290) – "2.8 million young, healthy Soviet POWs" killed by the Germans, "mainly by starvation ... in less than eight months" of 1941–42, before "the decimation of Soviet POWs ... was stopped" and the Germans "began to use them as laborers".
^Levy, Michele Frucht (2009). ""The Last Bullet for the Last Serb": The Ustaša Genocide against Serbs: 1941–1945".Nationalities Papers.37 (6):807–837.doi:10.1080/00905990903239174.S2CID162231741.
^Sohi, Seema (2014).Echoes of Mutiny: Race, Surveillance, and Indian Anticolonialism in North America.Oxford University Press. p. 8.ISBN978-0-19-937625-4.During the early decades of the twentieth century, US Immigration, Justice, and State Department officials cast Indian anticolonialists as a "Hindu" menace
^Zhao, X. & Park, E.J.W. (2013).Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History. Greenwood. p. 1142.ISBN978-1-59884-239-5
^Schultz, Jeffrey D. (2002).Encyclopedia of Minorities in American Politics: African Americans and Asian Americans. p. 284.
^abSimonovits, Gábor; Kézdi, Gábor; Kardos, Péter (2017). "Seeing the World Through the Other's Eye: An Online Intervention Reducing Ethnic Prejudice".American Political Science Review.112:186–193.doi:10.1017/S0003055417000478.ISSN0003-0554.S2CID148909505.
^Minow, Martha (1985). "Learning to Live with the Dilemma of Difference: Bilingual and Special Education".Law and Contemporary Problems.48 (2). Duke University School of Law:157–211.ISSN0023-9186.JSTOR1191571.
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.
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. Bloomington:Indiana University Press.
Ewen; Ewen (2006).Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality. New York: Seven Stories Press.
Smedley, Audrey. 2007.Race in North America: Origins and Evolution of a World View. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Stoler, Ann Laura (1997). "Racial Histories and Their Regimes of Truth".Political Power and Social Theory.11:183–206. (historiography of race and racism)
Taguieff, Pierre-André (1987),La Force du préjugé : Essai sur le racisme et ses doubles, Tel Gallimard, La Découverte.
Poliakov, Leon. The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalistic Ideas In Europe (Barnes & Noble Books (1996))ISBN0-7607-0034-6.
Trepagnier, Barbara. 2006.Silent Racism: How Well-Meaning White People Perpetuate the Racial Divide. Paradigm Publishers.
Winant, Howard andOmi, MichaelRacial Formation in the United States Routeledge (1986); Second Edition (1994).
Bettina Wohlgemuth (2007).Racism in the 21st century: how everybody can make a difference. AV Akademikerverlag GmbH & Company KG.ISBN978-3-8364-1033-5.
RacismReviewArchived 19 November 2017 at theWayback Machine – Created and maintained by American sociologistsJoe Feagin, PhD and Jessie Daniels, PhD, provides a research-based analysis of racism.
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