Racism does not move tidily and unchanged through time. It assumes new forms and articulates new antagonisms in different situations.
INTRODUCTION
The term “racism” is often used in a loose and unreflective way to describe the hostile or negative feelings of one ethnic group or “people” toward another and the actions resulting from such attitudes. But sometimes the antipathy of one group toward another is expressed and acted upon with a single-mindedness and brutality that go far beyond the group-centered prejudice and snobbery that seem to constitute an almost universal human failing (2002).
Racism refers to any theory or doctrine stating that inherited physical characteristics, such as skin color, facial features, hair texture, and the like, determine behavior patterns, personality traits, or intellectual abilities. In practice, racism typically takes the form of a claim that some human races are superior to others. An abuse of the concept of differences among peoples, it has contributed to the practices of discrimination and prejudice among groups in many parts of the world.
Racism was a prevalent ideology in Europe and America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Racist theories about supposed physical and intellectual superiority were advanced by , both of whom insisted that supreme among the races were members of the mythical Nordic, or Aryan, race. Nazi Germany under based its extermination of millions of Jews and other non-Aryans on this theory of race supremacy and the corollary concept of racial purity.
The term for “race” in Western European languages did have relevant antecedent meanings associated with animal husbandry and aristocratic lineages. The recognition of superior breeds of horses and dogs obviously foreshadowed the biological ranking of human beings with differing physical traits. Heredity was commonly associated with blood, and titled families were thought to manifest their royal or noble blood through recurring somatic characteristics.
In 1611 a Spanish dictionary included among the definitions of raza an honorific use—“a caste or quality of authentic horses”— and a pejorative one, as referring to a lineage that included Jewish or Moorish ancestors. The “blood libels” against Jews that began in the Middle Ages were rooted in a belief that blood could convey sacred or magical properties. The notion, implicit in these accusations, that Christian blood differed from Jewish was clearly affirmed in the sixteenth century Spanish conception of limpieza de sangre. But the fact that different varieties of animals of the same species could interbreed, as could all humans, meant that such premodern hereditarianism did not threaten the orthodox belief in the essential unity of humankind. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and beyond, the term “race” or its equivalent was also frequently used to refer to nations or peoples—as in “the English race” or “the French race.” Whenever and wherever it was used, however, the term implied that “races” had stable and presumably unchangeable characteristics (2002).
The modern theory of race is to be traced to the 18th century with the scientific studies of who propagated the theory of several basic racial types, the noblest being the "Caucasians" or white groups. The pseudo-science of race blossomed in the 19th century thanks to the writings of some authors – doctrines that would prove so lethal in the 20th century in the hands of the Nazis. Unwittingly, cultural anthropologists added grist to the mill of the racists by their studies of racial types and anatomies and formulation of racial categories, genotypes, and biological differences (2004).
The phrase has been more often than not misapplied, as insists in his latest work, Racism: A Short History. A professor of sociology at Stanford University and author of significant works on anti-black racism, offers a concisely lucid analysis of the origins of racism, which he defines as hostile or negative feelings of one group towards another and actions that result.
The defining traits of race are innate or unchangeable, e.g., skin pigmentation. "Racism exists when one ethnic group or historical collectivity dominates, excludes, or seeks to eliminate another on the basis of differences that it believes are hereditary or unalterable." A racist doesn't hate a person for "what he believes but for what he is." A racist state such as South Africa under the apartheid regime or Nazi Germany legalizes racism and develops a hierarchy to promote and enforce its racist ideology.
Race and racism have become foci of interest in the social sciences. In the past two decades there has been a noticeable expansion in scholarship and research about race and racism in contemporary societies. This has been reflected in a growing body of theoretical and empirically based work on various facets of race and racism in both contemporary societies and historical periods. Although much of this research has historically been located within the discipline of sociology, a notable feature of recent trends has been the growth of research in disciplines such as anthropology, politics, geography, media and cultural studies, law and the humanities (2004). This paper will attempt to discuss the premise “Racism does not move tidily and unchanged through time. It assumes new forms and articulates new antagonisms in different situations,” with emphasis on the origins of racism and how it evolved through the years.
BODY
As an ideology, racism has been on the wane since the 1940s, although in a few countries, such as South Africa, it has had the support of the political leadership. In other countries it lingers on as a folk mythology. The overwhelming bulk of scientific opinion in both the social and the biological sciences, however, now rejects the notion that large human populations, such as the so-called white, black, and yellow races, behave differently because of their physical appearance, or that they can be said to be genetically superior or inferior to one another. Genetic differences between population groups do exist, of course. None of these group differences, however, has yet been shown to affect personality, intelligence, or, indeed, any ability that significantly relates to social behavior.
In recent years the term racism has been at times misapplied to various related but distinct social attitudes and occurrences. For example, feelings of cultural superiority based on language, religion, morality, manners, or some other aspect of culture are sometimes labeled as racist, but the proper term for such feelings is ethnocentrism. Another loose usage of the term is the notion of institutional racism – meaning any practice that results, intentionally or otherwise, in differential representation of different human groups.
Recent theorizing on the nature of racism suggests that over the last few decades it has come to be expressed in more subtle and ambiguous ways because while many white people proclaim egalitarian values, their cognitions and behavior are influenced by prejudices that are buried deep in their psyche. This leads to the possibility that those who perpetrate and those who experience racism may have different interpretations of events that involve racism ( 2001).
Thus, race remains a determining factor in both cognitive processing and social action, and racism is still experienced by minority groups, much to the bemusement of the `racist-non-racist' perpetrators, who may believe that they are neither prejudiced nor racist. The perpetrators and the victims of subtle and covert forms of racism probably have different perceptions and understandings of interactions, due in part to the nature of contemporary racism, which may be marked by conditions of ambiguity, and by denial on the part of the perpetrators. So, as (2001) has argued, rather than disqualifying the views of targets of racism, as has been the case in previous research, the observations of those who experience everyday racism may be more relevant in identifying hidden and subtle racism.
The causes of racism are complex and cannot be reduced to a single factor. Its rise and fall are often linked with real conflicts of interest and competition for scarce resources. Historically, racism has commonly accompanied slavery, colonialism, and other forms of exploitation and gross inequality.
In other cases, relatively powerless groups that have felt threatened by social and economic instability have blamed other powerless groups for their predicament. Racism is frequently an irrational reaction to a real or perceived threat to the status quo.
Racism is rooted on religion. Anti-Judaism became antisemitism whenever it turned into a consuming hatred that made getting rid of Jews seem preferable to trying to convert them, and antisemitism became racism when the belief took hold that Jews were intrinsically and organically evil rather than merely having false beliefs and wrong dispositions (2002).
Racism is now increasingly used to mean something far beyond its dictionary definition. It is a racism that is not just directed at those with darker skins, from the former colonial territories, but at the newer categories of the displaced, the dispossessed and the uprooted who are beating at western Europe's doors, the Europe that helped to displace them in the first place. It is a racism, that is, that cannot be color-coded, directed as it is at poor whites as well, and is therefore passed off as xenophobia, a "natural" fear of strangers ( 2005).
In the modern era the underlying assumption of "racism" is a belief that differences in the culture, values, and/or practices of some ethnic/religious groups are "too different" and are likely to threaten "community values" and social cohesion. Note the evolution: as belief in racial differences and racial superiority wanes in polite society, some parties expand the meaning of racism to condemn political decisions such as worrying about too much immigration (even of poor whites), preferring one's own culture, fearing radical Islam, and implementing effective counterterrorist measures (2005). This attempt to delegitimize political differences must be rejected. Racism refers only to racial issues, not to views on immigration, culture, religion, ideology, law enforcement, or military strategy. But it cannot be denied that racism has taken many forms and has evolved or changed through the decades. It did assume new forms and articulates new antagonisms in different situations.
Specific forms of racism exist, like institutional racism and individual racism. First, we must make the familiar distinction between institutional and individual racism. Institutional racism refers to specific institutions or pervasive social forms that embody racism or racial injustice—such as word-of-mouth recruiting at a mostly white company, which leaves potential racial minority applicants at a disadvantage; or educational institutions failing to provide an atmosphere and services sensitive to the experiential and cultural differences of racial minority students, thus failing to provide equal educational opportunity for those students. By individual racism is meant any racism on the part of individuals, which can include actions, beliefs, attitudes, even feelings. The most common forms of individual attitudinal racism are bigotry, prejudice, and a belief in one's racial superiority, and these attitudes prompt many forms of racist behavior. However, individual racist acts can be unintentionally racist, particularly in institutionally racist contexts, where an individual is simply doing her job or conforming with "standard practice" so that her actions have racially discriminatory effect, but not the motivation (1999).
The terms racism and racist are distinctly moral or morally charged. In speaking of a "racist remark", a "racist stereotype", or a "racist policy", people condemn in strong terms the object in question. In the dominant culture in some countries, to accuse someone of a racist action or a racist sentiment or belief is to charge him with a serious moral failure, and most people wish very much to avoid being thought to be or being called, "racist” (1999).
Racism is a racial, socio-political and psychological phenomenon that occurs within a context of racial differences; it involves a set of beliefs about and attitudes toward a different racial group(s), which are rooted systemically and sustained institutionally within a larger context of political and economic hegemony (1994).
In other words, the true nature of racism is only masked when conceptualizes as the biased generalization of one racial group about another racial group. Racism is only masked when conceptualized as the biased generalizations of one racial group about another racial group. Racism is inextricably linked to the distribution of wealth and the "distribution of resources across groups." G.M. argues that racist institutions are controlled by white people who attempt to regulate "a reservoir of cheap and coercible labor for the rest of the country.”
The 'evidence' of fundamental differences between white 'Caucasian' and 'Negro' was seemingly overwhelming, and all to the latter's detriment. One aspect of this was the previously mentioned endurance of 'physiognomical' (including phrenological) thinking. A sense that physical form reflected underlying psychological character endowed physical anthropological descriptions with a powerful racist rhetorical force.
To measure 'facial angle', prognathousness, blackness, and brain size was to quantify proximity to a European aesthetic-cum-psychological ideal, which was tantamount to measuring degree of evolutionary advancement. While this occasionally backfired (e.g. greater European hairiness), the implications could usually be evaded by special adaptational pleading (hair was retained in the colder northern climate). A low brow, a protruding jaw, and small skull possessed psychological meanings which were felt to be self-evident, almost matters of direct perception (1997).
From a legal standpoint there are ways that a person can deal with racism in law enforcement and the workplace when he or she is aware of constitutional rights and the law ( 2002). Racial inequality is one big problem of racism. No doubt labor market discrimination has diminished in the past sixty years, and whites are clearly less prejudiced today than they were in 1940. But these developments tell us very little about contemporary patterns of racial discrimination and racial inequality ( 2003). But at present, this is not so prevalent and many other forms already exist.
Some feel that to discuss racism, one has to be political. Well, racism by definition is political because it is centered on power. Racism is more than race prejudice and/or bigotry. It is more than individual attitudes and actions. It is the collective actions of a dominant racial group. Racial prejudice becomes racism when one group's racial prejudices are enforced by the systems and institutions of a society, giving power and privilege based on skin color to the group in power.
The psychological aspect of racism begins with the rise of Spencerian and Darwinian evolutionary theory in the 1850s, when and cousin opened the Psychological discussion. In traditional Christian cosmology, 'Mankind's' basic unity was an article of faith: we are all descendants of Noah's sons and daughters-in-law. This seemingly explained the main varieties of physique and colour with which Europeans were familiar-white Europeans, brown Asians and black Africans (1997).
By 1800 the broader European perspective had fundamentally altered. Imperial expansion, and accelerating technological sophistication, gave ideas of intrinsic European superiority ever more credibility. The Enlightenment notion of history as progressive and directional made it inevitable that differences between peoples and cultures would eventually be construed evaluatively as reflecting relative levels of advancement (1997).
This entire episode has implications beyond the race issue, bearing directly on current debates about the social construction of science. There is a continuing desire to see science as containing some transcendental core immune to the impact of 'external' factors such as funding and ideological interests. It may now be grudgingly admitted that the appeal of evolutionary theory as a metaphor and rationale for capitalism contributed to its acceptance and cultural impact but beneath that, it will be said, exists some 'pure' a historical scientific nucleus of objective knowledge. In the case of the extensive scientific work on race, however, this certainly seems highly dubious.
To put it bluntly, all this research was on something which was not there. All that exists is a vast range of human morphological diversity. The very concept of 'race’ was entirely a product of non-scientific forces, and no core of objective scientific knowledge about it, no enduring gains in scientific understanding, were obtained. That this diversity per se can be partly explained in evolutionary terms may be admitted, but the ‘race’ concept and its hierarchical progressivist interpretation prevented any permanent 'scientific progress' in understanding it. If this is so, 'Scientific Racism’ provides a clear case where apparently normal natural science can be conducted in terms bearing little relationship to any existing 'transfactual' natural phenomenon, and is only explicable in strong social constructionist terms ( 1997).
One can therefore trace the origins of the two main forms of modern racism — the color-coded white supremacist variety and the essentialist version of antisemitism—to the late medieval and early modern periods. Since the idiom of this period was primarily religious rather than naturalistic or scientific, it could only be through some special act of God that some peoples could have been consigned to pariah status or slavery. But any such invocation of what might be called supernaturalist racism came into conflict with the main thrust of Christianity—the salvation of the entire human race, which, according to the New Testament, was of “one blood.” It was because he argued from this perspective that Las Casas was more persuasive than Sepu´lveda. On a popular level the great curses served to make it easier for Christians to treat other human beings as less than human ( 2002).
The notion that there was a single pan-European or “white” race was slow to develop and did not crystallize until the eighteenth century. Direct encounters with Africans had of course made Europeans aware of their own light pigmentation, but in other contexts whiteness, as opposed to national and religious affiliations, was not a conscious identity or seen as a source of specific inherited traits. At a time when social inequality based on birth was the general rule among Europeans themselves, color-coded racism had little scope for autonomous development. In the New World, where European pigmentation could be readily compared to that of black slaves or copper-toned Indians, color soon became one—but only one—of several salient identities ( 2002).
As we have seen, something that can be legitimately described as racism existed well before the twentieth or even the late nineteenth century. Prejudice and discrimination, fortified by ideologies claiming that the differences between human groups of apparently divergent ancestry are immutable and have implications for social inclusion or ranking, have a history that goes back to the late Middle Ages. But racist principles were not fully codified into laws effectively enforced by the state or made a central concern of public policy until the emergence of what I will call “overtly racist regimes” during the past century. conception of American and South African segregation as the “highest stage of white supremacy” draws attention to the relation between modernization and legalized racism. When the unequal treatment of people based on their race is bureaucratized and “rationalized” in the Weberian sense, one can say that racism has been modernized. The most deadly outcome of a racist regime—the Holocaust—required more than antisemitic ideology and sentiment. It was thoroughly dependent, as has emphasized, on modern bureaucratic methods and advanced technology (2002).
It is widely believed that racism remains a major international problem at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The term is used in some countries and in some circles to describe hostility and discrimination directed against a group for virtually any reason. The French, for example, sometimes use the term to describe biases founded on age, gender, or sexual orientation. Usually, however, the act of racializing the Other seizes upon differences that are “ethnic” in some sense. According to political scientist , ethnicity “is based on a myth of collective ancestry, which usually carries with it traits believed to be innate. Some notion of ascription, however diluted, and affinity deriving from it are inseparable from the concept of ethnicity.” The marks or identifiers usually associated with ethnicity are language, religion, customs, and physical characteristics (inborn or acquired). One or more (sometimes all) may serve as sources of ethnic divisiveness; any one of them can provoke disdain, discrimination, or violence on the part of another group that does not share the trait or traits that have come to define ethnic Otherness. It is justifiable, as I once did in an essay, to describe the essence of racism as ethnicity made hierarchical, or, in other words, making difference invidious and disadvantageous through the application of power. But, as the preceding chapters of this book suggest, I would now put more stress than I did then on the presence and articulation of a belief that the defining traits are innate or unchangeable. Pigmentation, however, is not the only supposedly indelible mark of difference upon which racism can be based, as the history of antisemitism clearly demonstrates (Fredrickson, 2002).
Unfortunately, racism survives at the present, and this exists in many forms. If racism is not dead, it is less intense and intellectually respectable than it was a century or even a half-century ago. But human beings continue to mistreat other human beings on the basis of their ethnic identities. In a sense we may have returned to the chronological starting point of this inquiry. Before “the invention of racism” Christians persecuted Jews and Muslims because of their beliefs and the behavior that was associated with them. The Crusades were not fought under the banner of white, Aryan, or Indo-European superiority or the divine right of the Herrenvolk to rule over lesser breeds. The conflicts were defined in what we would today call cultural rather than racial terms. Of course, as has been often shown in this study, the line between “culturalism” and racism is not difficult to cross. Culture and even religion can become essentialized to the point that they can serve as a functional equivalent of biological racism, as has to some extent occurred recently in the perception of blacks in the United States and Britain, and of Muslims in several predominantly Christian nations (2002).
According to a well-known philosophical maxim, the last thing a fish notices is the water. Things that are unproblematic seem natural and tend to go unnoticed. Fish take the water they swim in for granted, just as European Americans take their race as a given, as normal. White Americans may face difficulties in life—problems having to do with money, religion, or family—but race is not one of them. White Americans can be sanguine about racial matters because their race has not been (until recently) visible to the society in which they live. They cannot see how this society produces advantages for them because these benefits seem so natural that they are taken for granted, experienced as wholly legitimate. They literally do not see how race permeates America's institutions—the very rules of the game—and its distribution of opportunities and wealth (2003).
In the new conventional wisdom about race, white racism is regarded as a remnant from the past because most whites no longer express bigoted attitudes or racial hatred. Racial realists conclude that racism has ended because of the massive change in white attitudes toward blacks over the past sixty years. For example, more than half of all whites once believed that blacks were intellectually inferior. In 1994, however, only 13 percent of whites believed that blacks had “less in-born ability to learn” than whites. Whites also used to favor school segregation by overwhelming majorities, but now 90 percent favor school integration. In the 1940s whites believed they should be favored in competition for jobs. Today, on the other hand, whites unanimously agree that “blacks and whites should have an equal chance to compete for jobs (2003). To racial realists, this evidence means that the color line has been radically altered.
Those of us who came of age in the 1960s grew up in a society where racism was overt. It was difficult to ignore or deny; the evidence of segregation was often as stark as the lettering on a “whites only” sign. The visibility of racial discrimination, together with the moral power of the civil rights movement, mobilized people of all races against laws and ushered in landmark civil rights legislation to end it. Divided into black and white, the world was relatively uncomplicated, and the options were straightforward. One favored either integration or segregation ( 2003).
Looking beyond plain old-fashioned racism, however, the another reason race matters is that the most important source of continuing racial disparities in many countries is still the legacy of past patterns of discrimination and racially coded patterns of disinvestment. Disaccumulation, as it is called, persists today in good part because the people of the many countries never moved with sufficient seriousness to remedy it. This is both the most crucial reality to understand in comprehending the problem of durable racial inequality in the twenty-first century, and the one that seems hardest for many people to fully grasp—because this kind of racism is largely invisible.
Much of the debate about race in many nations today still revolves around the question of whether ongoing racial disparities in schooling, jobs, income, incarceration, and other realms are mainly the result of current overt discrimination or the result of flawed culture and behavior of people of color. As we have demonstrated throughout this book, the correct answer is neither. Most of the current gap in life-chances and various measures of performance between blacks and whites reflects the legacy of past decisions—decisions that cumulatively resulted in a profound imbalance in the most fundamental structures of opportunity and support in many countries (2003). In America, for example, in housing, in education, in transportation, in employment policy, and in income support/social insurance policy, the choices that systematically disadvantaged black Americans were also ones that, by design or otherwise, benefited white Americans. These policies, in combination and over generations, have had enormous and pervasive consequences.
In debates about racism within the United States, some take the position that black people cannot be racist and that only white people can be racist. Others hold a very different view. They say that racism is not confined to one group, that members of any ethnic or racial group can be racist against members of any other group, and that racism on the part of blacks (or Asians or Asian Americans, and so on) is no better or worse than racism on the part of whites. All racism is equal, according to this second view (1999).
Additionally, it is important to understand that the key element to racism is the fact that there is a hegemonic relation of oppressor to oppressed. Certain beliefs and attitudes are necessary for being a racist but they are not sufficient -- what is needed are institutional frameworks or social mechanisms through which such beliefs and attitudes are enacted to oppress a particular people (1994).
CONCLUSION
The term racism is now increasingly used to mean something far beyond its dictionary definition. This is because racism is not a stagnant thing and is constantly evolving and changing. Racism is no longer just about color, it is a racism that is not just directed at those with darker skins, from the former colonial territories, but at the newer categories. It is a racism, that is, that cannot be color-coded, directed as it is at poor whites and Asians as well. Racism includes aspects of discrimination in education, work, religion, income, and many more.
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