He racism Is the act in which one person discriminates to another by its color of skin and by all the morphologic traits that are linked to him.
These characteristics associated with the morphology can be as simple as the shape of the nose, the height, the shape of the head and even the color of the eyes. Racism also tends to link the criteria of race with that of ethnicity and nationality, which is why it is often accompanied by xenophobia and Nationalist chauvinism .
There is ample historiographical documentation in which it can be demonstrated that racism is of very old data, reason why it is one of the oldest forms of discrimination that exist.
The racists' justifications have been motivated by ethnocentric, ideological, pseudo-scientific, religious, and folkloric criteria. The sum of all these causes shapes the structure of racist discourse, as well as its arguments and allegations.
Of the characteristics present in racism, what stands out most is the absolute aversion to a specific race that is seen as harmful or alien to the interests of the discriminator.
There is, of course, a component of prejudices and cognitive biases in which the racist asserts that he is in a superior position and therefore has the right to subdue or eliminate inferior races. These precepts, at the time, received a strong reception and left unfortunate consequences.
You can also see the 18 types of racism in the world and the 9 most shocking historical racism cases .
Brief historical review of racism
The discrimination of one human being by another is not new; On the contrary, it is very old, and for different reasons.
There is abundant evidence that, in antiquity, anti-Semitism was common in the Assyrians, that the Egyptians subjugated the ethnic groups of sub-Saharan Africa and that even the very Aristotle Justified in its Politics Slavery, xenophobia and machismo. It is also known that in the Middle Ages there were such hatreds.
However, the contempt for a different racial group, as it is now known, did not take its final form until the Age of Discovery , That is to say from the sixteenth century.
By that time, it was believed that the Indians and blacks were not only not people, but were even below animals. For this basic reason, they were subjected to slavery during European colonization, which survived in later years as a regime of racial segregation.
Racism was more serious in some countries than in others. So he testified Alexander von Humboldt When on his trip to Cuba he found that blacks were better treated in the viceroyalties of the Spanish Crown than in the English, French, and Dutch colonies, and even in the United States.
However, Humboldt stressed that there was no good discrimination and that, after all, slavery should be abolished and eradicated.
In this way, racism served for centuries as a tool to promote a social division that was structured by castes. The dominant group was often the white race, at least as far as racial discrimination perpetrated in the Western world was concerned.
In other latitudes similar parameters were followed in which the dominated one was inferior being or, in his defect, a citizen of second that did not have access to the rights of the citizens.
It was not until the 19th and 20th centuries that racism came to its end. In these centuries the extremes of genocide or Apartheid , In which blacks were free citizens, but with legal guarantees nonexistent or very small.
The struggles against them resulted in their abolition and the establishment of a new order in which freedom, respect and equality between men were established.
Causes
Ethnocentric
Racial discrimination through ethnocentrism is premised on the fact that men who are not in the"we"category belong to the"them"ethnic group, especially if their lineage is doubtful or mixed with other races.
For example, in Spanish America, peninsular whites called white creoles and shore whites to whites who, having European ancestry, were born in America and had a lower social position than those born in the Old Continent.
Ideological
It is based on ideological precepts raised with philosophy. For example, during German fascism, Alfred Rosenberg , Considered the thinker of Hitler , Wrote a treatise in which he affirmed that the"Aryan race"was superior to the Jewish one.
On the opposite side of the globe, Watsuji Tetsuro He argued in his book Fudo That the natural environment of Japan had unique traits, which is why the Japanese were special beings with qualities that had neither Chinese nor Koreans.
Pseudoscientific
It came to be called"scientific racism"when it was fashionable between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He used pseudo-sciences such as phrenology to misrepresent concepts of evolutionary biology, in order to construct models of thought in which eugenics and racial cleansing were encouraged.
It was thought that only whites had the right to supremacy and had supposedly"scientific"evidences to prove this point of view.
None of the postulates of"scientific racism"is true, so it lacks foundation. There is no evidence to support them. Therefore, this concept is discarded and overcome, without any validity in the science of today.
Religious
Here religious criteria are used to cement racism. Alfred Rosenberg, mentioned above, suggested that Christianity should be erased from every aspect of Judaism or Semitic racial aspects, for Jesus Christ was Aryan, German, and therefore European.
Mormonism is not far behind either. In his sacred book, it is stated that God stipulates that good men are white, whereas bad ones are blacks, which are the fruit of divine punishment.
Folklore
This cause is rare, but it exists and there is evidence of it. It focuses, therefore, on racism that uses popular culture.
This happens a lot with the ethnicity of the Dogones In Mali, who by oral tradition fervently believe that a child born white is a manifestation of evil spirits, and therefore must die. If he lives, he is the object of derision among his own, unaware that such whiteness is due to a genetic condition called albinism.
characteristics
On the basis of the above, it can be said that racism meets these four essential characteristics:
Biased Attitude
The hated racial group is by definition bad without giving concrete and demonstrable reasons why. It is simply assumed that there are"superior"and"inferior"races, accepting no further explanation than those given by a given doctrine.
Aggressive behavior
Verbal, psychological or physical violence is used against the discriminated racial group. There may be harassment and mistreatment.
Fixation by race
Regardless of their religious creed or political militancy, the"inferior"race is because of their physical features related to their skin color. For a white supremacist, a Negro is an inferior being regardless of whether he is a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, a Republican, or a Democrat.
Hate speech
The messages of racism are loaded with a strong contempt for the discriminated races, which are taught to hate, despise and, where possible, eliminate. These ideas are intended to influence public policy, laws and the school system.
Consequences
Racism has had pernicious effects that have been seen throughout history. Among the most dangerous are:
Genocide
"Racial cleansing"has been perpetrated in massacres such as those Holocaust , the Nanking Massacre and the Genocide of Rwanda .
Apartheid
One example is South Africa, where blacks were denied their full liberties. In the United States there was a very similar regime in which there could not even be interracial marriages.
Slavery
Very common practice during the time of European colonization and that lasted well into the nineteenth century.
Division and social inequality
The most practical example is the caste system imposed by the Spanish Crown in its American dominions, in which the superior castes had better socioeconomic conditions than the inferior castes.
Some attempts to end racism
There are also numerous forces that were completely opposed to racism and the abuses committed in their name. Many have been the struggles in which the abolition of injustices that were carried out at the institutional level was promoted.
In countries such as South Africa, human rights movements achieved notable victories, but not without making large sacrifices. The same has happened in North America and India.
The process to disarm racism has been slow, but fruitful. However, it has had to deal with new forms of this scourge. Racism has been disguised with more subtle means that are intermingled with other means of discrimination.
Peoples like the Latin Americans have made epic efforts to reduce racism to its minimum expression. In Asia, for its part, this problem has not been sufficiently denounced in the world.
References
- Allen, Theodore (1994). The Invention of the White Race (2 vols.). London: Verse.
- Barkan, Elazar (1992). The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States between the World Wars. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Barker, Chris (2004). The SAGE Dictionary of Cultural Studies. California: SAGE Publications.
- Daniels, Jessie (1997). White Lies: Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality in White Supremacist Discourse. New York: Routledge.
- Ehrenreich, Eric (2007). The Nazi Ancestral Proof: Genealogy, Racial Science, and the Final Solution. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- Isaac, Benjamin (1995). The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1952). Race and History. Paris: UNESCO.
- Poliakov, Leon (1996). The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalistic Ideas In Europe. New York: Barnes & Noble Books.