Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

This word, current from the era of nazism onward, was originally coined to denote a relatively systematic ideological position founded on belief in racial inequality and racial determinism. Today it is effectively synonymous with “racialism,” and thus covers a broader range of prejudiced attitudes and discriminatory actions less dependent on attempts at formal intellectual justification. Granted the ethnic complexities of the European peoples and the scale of their impact on other regions of the world, it is not surprising that ideas about racial differentiation should have formed an important strand in their history and should have embraced notions about racial hierarchy too. Europe's record of slavery and colonial imperialism , for example, reveals many unquestioned assumptions about the white race's superiority over the peoples of Africa and Asia. Yet, even aside from contexts of “color,” racism has also influenced the conduct of ethnic rivalries within the continent itself. Racial discourse pervaded the modern manifestations of antisemitism , and was almost invariably present whenever nationalism shifted from liberal to illiberal forms. The latter versions became commoner when, partly under the influence of positivism and social darwinism , the emphasis in debate on racial differences moved from cultural to more immutable biological factors. In the later nineteenth ... log in or subscribe to read full text