RACISM

The dictionary meaning of racism is prejudice,

discrimination, or antagonism directed against
someone of a different race based on the belief that
one's own race is superior. Though many countries
around the globe have passed laws related to races
and their discrimination, the first significant
international human rights instrument developed
by the United Nations (UN) was the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which was
adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in
1948. The UDHR recognizes that if people are to be
treated with dignity, they require economic rights,
social rights including education, and the rights to
cultural and political participation and civil liberty. It
further states that everyone is entitled to these
rights "without distinction of any kind, such as race,
color, sex, language, religion, political or other
opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or
other status". 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.
In sociology and social psychology, racial identity
and the acquisition of that identity, is often used as
a variable in racism studies. Race and race relations
are prominent areas of study in sociology and
economics. Much of the sociological literature
focuses on white racism. Some of the earliest
sociological works on racism were penned by
sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, the first African
American to earn a doctoral degree from Harvard
University. While the concepts of race and ethnicity
are considered to be separate in contemporary
social science, the two terms have a long history of
equivalence in both popular usage and older social
science literature. "Ethnicity" is often used in a
sense close to one traditionally attributed to "race":
the division of human groups based on qualities
assumed to be essential or innate to the group (e.g.
shared ancestry or shared behavior). Therefore,
racism and racial discrimination are often used to
describe discrimination on an ethnic or cultural
basis, independent of whether these differences are
described as racial. According to a United Nations
convention on racial discrimination, there is no
distinction between the terms "racial" and "ethnic"
discrimination. The UN convention further
concludes that superiority based on racial
differentiation is scientifically false, morally
condemnable, socially unjust and dangerous. It also
declared that there is no justification for racial
discrimination, anywhere, in theory or in practice.
Language, linguistics, and discourse are active areas
of study in the humanities, along with literature and
the arts. Discourse analysis seeks to reveal the
meaning of race and the actions of racists through
careful study of the ways in which these factors of
human society are described and discussed in
various written and oral works. According to
dictionaries, the word is commonly used to describe
prejudice and discrimination based on race. 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.

Cultural racism manifests as societal beliefs and

customs that promote the assumption that the
products of a given culture, including the language
and traditions of that culture are superior to those
of other cultures. It shares a great deal with
xenophobia, which is often characterized by fear of,
or aggression toward, members of an out-group by
members of an in-group. In relation to racism, color
blindness is the disregard of racial characteristics in
social 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. Historical economic or
social disparity is alleged to be a form of
discrimination 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. 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.

The United Nations use the definition of racial

discrimination laid out in the International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination, adopted in 1966. In 2001, the
European Union explicitly banned racism, along
with many other forms of social discrimination, in
the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European
Union, the legal effect of which, if any, would
necessarily be limited to Institutions of the
European Union: "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."

Racism existed during the 19th century as "scientific

racism", which attempted to provide a racial
classification of humanity. Definition explicitly
ignores the biological concept of race, which is still
subject to scientific debate. 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. In conclusion, it is
said “Racism is a refugee for the ignorant. It seeks
to divide and to destroy. It is the enemy of freedom,
and deserves to be met head-on and stamped out”