racism hostility, contempt, condescension, or prejudice, on the basis of social practices of racial classification, and the wider phenomena of social, economic, and political mistreatment that often accompany such classification. The most salient instances of racism include the Nazi ideology of the ‘Aryan master race,’ American chattel slavery, South African apartheid in the late twentieth century, and the ‘Jim Crow’ laws and traditions of segregation that subjugated African descendants in the Southern United States during the century after the American Civil War.
Social theorists dispute whether, in its essence, racism is a belief or an ideology of racial inferiority, a system of social oppression on the basis of race, a form of discourse, discriminatory conduct, or an attitude of contempt or heartlessness (and its expression in individual or collective behavior). The case for any of these as the essence of racism has its drawbacks, and a proponent must show how the others can also come to be racist in virtue of that essence. Some deny that racism has any nature or essence, insisting it is nothing more than changing historical realities. However, these thinkers must explain what makes each reality an instance of racism. Theorists differ over who and what can be racist and under what circumstances, some restricting racism to the powerful, others finding it also in some reactions by the oppressed. Here, the former owe an explanation of why power is necessary for racism, what sort (economic or political? general or contextual?), and in whom or what (racist individuals? their racial groups?). Although virtually everyone thinks racism objectionable, people disagree over whether its central defect is cognitive (irrationality, prejudice), economic/prudential (inefficiency), or moral (unnecessary suffering, unequal treatment). Finally, racism’s connection with the ambiguous and controversial concept of race itself is complex. Plainly, racism presupposes the legitimacy of racial classifications, and perhaps the metaphysical reality of races. Nevertheless, some hold that racism is also prior to race, with racial classifications invented chiefly to explain and help justify the oppression of some peoples by others. The term originated to designate the pseudoscientific theories of racial essence and inferiority that arose in Europe in the nineteenth century and were endorsed by Germany’s Third Reich. Since the civil rights movement in the United States after World War II, the term has come to cover a much broader range of beliefs, attitudes, institutions, and practices. Today one hears charges of unconscious, covert, institutional, paternalistic, benign, anti-racist, liberal, and even reverse racism. Racism is widely regarded as involving ignorance, irrationality, unreasonableness, injustice, and other intellectual and moral vices, to such an extent that today virtually no one is willing to accept the classification of oneself, one’s beliefs, and so on, as racist, except in contexts of self-reproach. As a result, classifying anything as racist, beyond the most egregious cases, is a serious charge and is often hotly disputed. See also JUSTICE , POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. J.L.A.G.