Racism

A racist poster for elections in Georgia, in 1866

American propaganda during the Second World War

Banner held up by a person in a "White Pride" rally

Racism is the belief that a particular race is better or worse than another, and that a person is born with their social and moral traits, which are related to their race. Racial separatism is the belief, which is based on racism most of the time, that different races should remain apart from one another. Racism has existed throughout human history. It may be defined as the hatred of one person by another—or the belief that another person is less than human—because of skin color, language, customs, place of birth or any factor that supposedly reveals the basic nature of that person. It has influenced wars, slavery, the formation of nations, and legal codes.

During the past 500–1000 years, racism on the part of Western powers toward non-Westerners has had a far more significant impact on history than any other form of racism (such as racism among Western groups or among Easterners, such as Asians, Africans, and others). The most well known example of racism by the West has been slavery, especially making Africans slaves in the New World (slavery itself dates back thousands of years). This happened because of the racist belief that Black Africans were not as human as white Europeans and their descendants.

This belief was not "automatic": that is, Africans were not always to be worse or less human. When Portuguese sailors first explored Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries, they came upon empires and cities as advanced as their own, and they thought Africans to be serious rivals. Over time, though, as African civilizations did not match the technological advances of Europe, and the major European powers began to take things from the continent and kidnap people who lived there, forcing them to work as slave laborers in new colonies across the Atlantic, Africans came to be seen as an inferior "species," as "savages." This view was necessary to justify the slave trade at a time when Western culture had begun to promote individual rights and human equality. The willingness of some Africans to sell other Africans to European slave traders also led to claims of savagery, based on the false belief that the "dark people" were all like brothers, and all part of one society - as opposed to many different nations, some of which were at war with one another.

Racist idiologies

European 'Aryanism'

Herr Ali Haurand of Germany would have been called an ‘Aryan‘ back then.

In the late 18th century, Europeans began using the term Aryan to refer to the original prehistoric Proto-Indo-Europeans and their descendants up to the present day (i.e., the Indo-European peoples—those Caucasians who are speak the Indo-European languages). It was also assumed at the time, that, Aryans were a naturally culturally superior people. By the late 19th century, some Europeans began to use the name Aryan for only the Nordic peoples of Europe (one branch of the Indo-European peoples), as a "pure," "noble" and racially "superior" race they claimed were descended from the original Aryan tribes. The theory that the Aryans first came from Europe became especially popular in Germany and to a lesser degree in Austria and Hungary.

A Black slave who was beaten very badly. The person who hit him worked for his owner.

There was much prejudice based upon this perception of the world as the Europeans and Orientals both regarded them selves as superior to the other skin colours, which lead to the horrors of African slavery, Apartheid, the Jim Crow Laws, Nazism and Japanese imperialism. The accidental misinterpretation of the works of Charles Darwin (known as Darwinism) only helped to fuel the non-scientific opinions of 'race' and racial superiority'.

Colonialism

When Europeans came to America, they killed thousands of Native Americans and when the European settlers got to Australia, they started killing of large numbers of Aborigines. In both cases, they regarded the native people as predestined to be inferior and not worth helping. This view was based on the Europeans' opinions on Darwinism and how it could be used to judge the value of the native peoples.

The Australians are now making efforts to help the Aborigines, who they once discriminated against, long ago.

With the birth of there empires, many other native tribes suffered in Canada, New Zealand, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.

Japan also held similar beliefs about Chinese and Koreans in their colonies.

Anglo-French racism

Racism in the U.K., Ireland and France was usually about limiting the rights of Jews, Gypsies and minorities like the French Basques.

As the countries became independent after the 1950's, many migrated to the U.K. and France, but were decremented against. Some British cafes and hotels would not welcome in Caribbean guests and the French made Arabs feel unwelcome in some French towns as well. Since the 1960's, India, Pakistani and Bangladeshi people have moved to the U.K. and were victimised and 'Packy-bashed'. The horror of 9/11, 2001, has heightened the French and British fears about Islam and Arabs in general. Polish and Brazilian migrant labours are also discriminated against in some places. Racist parties like the U.K.'s British National Party and National Front trade on these fears to get votes.

Nazism

Both Sinti and Roma Gypsies about to be deported in Germany, May 22, 1940.

Alleged scientific findings of racial differences were used by Nazi Germany to justify the racialist policy with its concept of "Großdeutschland" (Greater Germany) and the Nordic racecial idea. The Nazis attitude towards the Jews were Anti-Semitic and falsely blamed them for Germany's defeat in World War I and the Great Depression. The Nazis and some of their anti-Semitic allies, like Hungary, committed genocide against the Jews during the Holocaust of World War II.

Both the Nazis and Romania's Iron Guard also persecuted the Gypsies, who were considered part of the allegedly inferior 'Indic' race. During World War II, the Nazis embarked on systematic attempt at genocide of the Romanies/Gypsies, known as the Porajmos. The Nazis also knowingly killed of thousands of Slavs, lesbians, Communists, liberals and gays.

Most Germans and Austrians are ashamed of this, but Hungary has yet to really face up to what it did to the Roma. Support for the racist Jobbik party rises.

Fascist Italy

Fascist Benito Mussolini, in a 1919 speech to denounce Soviet Russia, claimed that Jewish bankers in London and New York City were bound by the chains of race to Moscow, and claimed that 80 percent of the Soviet leaders were Jews.

Many Italian fascists held anti-Slavist views, especially against neighbouring Yugoslav nations, who they saw as being in competition with Italy, which had laid claim to the Yugoslavia's region of Dalmatia.

Mussolini said Italy would get its own way and was willing to use force to settle arguments. An early example was Italy's bombardment of the Greek island of Corfu in 1923. Soon after he succeeded in setting up a puppet regime in Albania and crushed a rebellion in Libya, which had been an Italian colony since 1912.

Italy, like Germany, Austria and Hungary mistakenly regarded all Slavs and Gypsies as stupid, racially inferior due to the effects of Social Darwinism and undeserving of there basic rights! Anti-Arab discrimination was also used in parts of Libya.

Some Italians still hate Arab, Gypsy and Romanian immigrants today.

Racism in Romania

Symbol of the Iron Guard .

The Iron Guard was an antisemitic fascist movement and political party in Romania from 1927 to 1941. They despised and denounced both Jews and Gypsies.

Some Romanian people still support these prejudice views even today.

Racism in America

A pro-segregation (segregative) sign on a restaurant in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1938. Obviously only Whites could eat here, whilst Blacks and Orientals were not wanted there!

American racism has been a major issue in the country since before its founding. Historically dominated by socially and ethnically diverse White settler society race in the United States as a concept became significant in relation to other groups. Generally racist attitudes in the country have been most onerously applied to Native Americans, African Americans and some "foreign-seeming" action against Mexican immigrants among others. The Chinese, Japanese and Irish had trouble in America, during the 19th century, but the Blacks fell foul of the Jim Crow Laws which once racially separated the racist parts of America between Blacks and Whites. These first emerged in the late 19th Century and lasted to the mid 1960s and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Millions of Africans were killed while they were held as prisoners or as slaves by the Europeans and Arabs. The African-American people and some others call this "The Black Holocaust".

Racism in South Africa

Sign from South Africa during Apartheid times.

South African Apartheid laws were a system was used to deny many rights of Non-white people The laws allowed the white minority to keep the Black majority out of certain areas. Black people had to carry special papers (passes) or have permission to live and work in particular areas. Whites opposed intermarriage with non-whites and Coloured people were also discriminated against, but not as badly as the Non-whites. The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 prohibited marriage between persons of different races and the Immorality Act of 1950 made sexual relations with a person of a different race a criminal offence . The Blacks suffered greatly and were even banned from voteing at one point.

The Imperial Rule Assistance Association of Japan

Logo of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association.

The Imperial Rule Assistance Association (Taisei Yokusankai) was a coalition of fascist and nationalist political movements of Japan such as the Imperial Way Faction (Kōdōha) and the Society of the East (Tōhōkai). It was formed under the guidance of Japanese Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe Prior to creation of the IRAA, Konoe had already effectively nationalized strategic industries, the news media, and labour unions, in preparation for total war with China. Japan needed more land, minerals and colonies, so they annexed Korea, Manchuria and part of China. The Japanese regarded the Chines, Koreans and Europeans as an inferior race that should be crushed and exploited.

When Konoe's successor, Hideki Tōjō took over the IRAA he attempted to establish himself as the absolute leader, or Shogun, of Japan, under the Emperor of Japan.

Some Japanese people still believe that they did not commit as many massacres as the Western World and China said they did.

A new world order

With the revelations of what the Holocaust had done to its victims and how the civil rights movement tried to liberate the Afro-Caribbeans from racist White supremacist rule in South Africa and the southern USA (e.g.-Mississippi and Alabama ), the old ideas about race were swept away along with the prejudices that followed in its wake! Blacks could vote in South Africa after a 50 year ban and the word 'Nigger' fell out use.

In some cases positive discrimination, the ethnics 1st laws and "political correctness" have taken the situation to the opposite extreme, leading to accusations in the UK, USA and Australia of reveres racism, that is to say racism in favor, not against the ethnic minorities. Political correctness is a term applied to language, ideas, policies, or behavior seen as seeking to minimize offense to gender, racial, cultural, disabled, aged or other identity groups. Conversely, the term "politically incorrect" is used to refer to language or ideas that may cause offense or that are unconstrained by orthodoxy or good manners (e.g.- racists and Islamophobics).

The United States is now a diverse country and in 2006, it became the third nation in world history to reach 300 million people. China and India each each got just over 1 billion people in them.

The spectacular growth of the Hispanic population through immigration from principally Mexico among other places combined with and generally high birth rates are noted as a partial factor for the USA's rising population in the last quarter-century. The 2000 census also found Native Americans/Amerindians at their highest population ever, 4.5 million, since the U.S was founded in 1776.

Related pages

• Race (sociology)
• Apartheid
• Nazis
• Discrimination
• KKK
• Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

Examples

• The Jim Crow laws in the United States, about 1890 to 1960
• The Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire
• The Nuremberg Laws in Germany 1935-45
• The Apartheid laws in South Africa, after 1948
• The White Australia policy in Australia
• The Ku Klux Klan is a movement that has racist ideas.