Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 02:55, 30 March 2011

Racialism is an emphasis on race or racial considerations. Currently, racialism entails a belief in the existence and significance of racial categories, but not necessarily that any absolute hierarchy between the races, has been demonstrated by a rigorous and comprehensive scientific process. Racialists usually reject some claims of racial superiority (such as "racial supremacy"), but may explicitly or implicitly subscribe to others, such as that races have acted in morally superior or inferior ways, at least in certain instances or periods of history.

Terminology

Racialism is the basic epistemological position that not only do races exist, but also that there are significant differences between them. This is to be contrasted with racism, which also assumes that some races are superior to others; or, in an altered meaning, refers to discrimination based on the concept of race.

However, this distribution of meanings between the two terms used to be precisely inverse at the time they were coined: The Oxford English Dictionary defined racialism as "belief in the superiority of a particular race" and gives a 1907 quote as the first recorded use. The term racism was defined by the OED as "he theory that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are determined by race", giving 1936 as the first recorded use. Additionally, the OED records racism as a synonym of racialism: "belief in the superiority of a particular race". By the end of World War II, racism had acquired the same supremacist connotations as racialism: racism now implied racial discrimination, racial supremacism and a harmful intent.

Since the 1960s, some authors have introduced a new meaning for the less-current racialism: Black civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois introduced racialism as having the same meaning as racism had prior to WWII, i.e. the philosophical belief that differences exist between human races, be they biological, social, psychological or in the realm of the soul. He reserved the use of racism to refer to the belief that one's particular race is superior to the others (viz., precisely the inverse of the OED definitions).

Scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah criticised DuBois for this definition of racialism in 'My Father's House' (1992) where he defines racialism as "...the view…that there are heritable characteristics, possessed by members of our species, which allow us to divide them into a small set of races, in such a way that all the members of these races share certain traits and tendencies with each other that they do not share with members of any other race."

Philosopher Pierre-André Taguieff has used the word racialism as a perfect synonym of scientific racism, to distinguish it from popular racism; He uses the term racialism to mean racism that claims to be scientifically founded. Arthur Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853–55) is an example of such racialism.

The race controversy

There is an ongoing controversy regarding the existence of biological races with some seeing races as only social constructs.

Current racialist positions have moved away from 19th century classifications and rely instead on genetics, studying physiological differences between groups such as race and height, but also more complex, and thus controversial, questions like race and intelligence, race and health, and race and crime.

Racialist vocabulary with inconsistent definitions is still used in medicine to a small extent, even when it has vanished from some census agencies and everyday speech.

Racialism as a self-descriptor or value-neutral term

In the modern English language, racism is a broad category encompassing many separate claims or impulses, such as chauvinism, identity politics, institutional racism, etc., and it is often used as a pejorative epitaph that many would want to avoid for various reasons. When the term "racialism" is used, this is more commonly people describing themselves, or attempting a more value-neutral terminology which is assumed to be more appropriate for (scientifically) objective communication or analysis.

Self-described racialists often wish to avoid many of the popular associations of "racism" that are considered pejorative, or involve extremism or illegal activities, such as: hatred, xenophobia, (malignant or forced) exploitation, separatism, racial supremacy, mass murder (for the purpose of genocide), genocide denial, vigilantism (hate crimes, terrorism), etc.

See also

• Juridical racialism
• La Raza
• Multiculturalism
• NAACP
• Racial hygiene
• Tribalism
• Craniofacial anthropometry
• Racial separatism
• Whiteness studies

Footnotes

1. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., s.v. "Racialism."
2. Kwame Anthony Appiah summarises Du Bois' position in his book In My Father's House, chapter 3.
3. P.J. Aspinall, "Collective Terminology to Describe the Minority Ethnic Population: The Persistence of Confusion and Ambiguity in Usage," Sociology 36, no. 4: 804.
4. M.A. Winker, "Measuring Race and Ethnicity: Why and How?," The Journal of the American Medical Association 292, no. 13 (2004): 1612-14.
5. John Relethford, The Human Species: An introduction to Biological Anthropology, 5th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003), 126.

Further reading

• Anderson, Gregory M. "Racial Identity, the Apartheid State, and the Limits of Political Mobilization and Democratic Reform in South Africa: The Case of the University of the Western." Identity 3, no. 1 (2003): 29–52. doi:10.1207/S1532706XID0301_03.
• Appiah, Kwame Anthony. In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-19-506852-1.
• Arter, David. "Black Faces in the Blond Crowd: Populist Racialism in Scandinavia", Parliamentary Affairs 45, no. 3 (1992): 357–372.
• Asante, Molefi Kete. The Afrocentric Idea. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998. ISBN 1-56639-595-X.
• Dobratz, Betty A. "White Power, White Pride!": The White Separatist Movement in the United States. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997.
• Kane, John. "Racialism and Democracy: The Legacy of White Australia." In The Politics of Identity in Australia, ed. Geoffrey Stokes, 117–131. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997. ISBN 052158356X.
• Kennedy, Paul and Nicholls Anthony, eds. Nationalist and Racialist Movements in Britain and Germany before 1914. Saint Antony's College Press, 1981.
• Lee, Woojin and Roemer, John. Electoral Consequences of Racialism for Redistribution in the United States: 1972–1992 (California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and social Sciences, 2002).
• Melvern, Linda. Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwanda Genocide. London: Verso, 2004.
• Ndebele, Nhlanhla. "The African National Congress and the Policy of Non-Racialism: A Study of the Membership Issues." Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies 29, no. 2 (2002): 133–146.
• Odocha, O. "Race and Racialism in Scientific Research and Publication in the Journal of the National Medical Association." Journal of the National Medical Association 92, no. 2 (2002): 96–98. PMID 10800300.
• Sanneh, Kelefa. "After the Beginning Again: The Afrocentric Ordeal." Transition 10, no. 3 (2001): 66–89.
• Snyder, Louis L. The Idea of Racialism: Meaning and History. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1962.
• Taylor, Paul C. "Appiah's Uncompleted Argument: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Reality of Race." Social Theory and Practice 26, no. 1 (2000): 103–128.
• Thompson, Walter Thomas. James Anthony Froude on Nation and Empire: A Study in Victorian Racialism. London: Taylor & Francis, 1998.
• UNESCO General Conference. Declaration of Fundamental Principles concerning the Contribution of the Mass Media to Strengthening Peace and International Understanding, to the Promotion of Human Rights and to Countering Racialism, Apartheid and Incitement to War (University of Hawaii, 1978).
• Reggie White's Speech before the Wisconsin State Assembly (click 778)
• Zubaida, Sami, ed. Race and Racialism. London: Tavistock, 1970.

External links

• John Henrik Clarke - Race: An Evolving Issue in Western Social Thought

• Core issues in ethics
• Eugenics
• Race
• Race and intelligence controversy