View source for Racism

'''Racism''' is a form of [[chauvinism]] which entails the hatred and discrimination of other humans on the basis of perceived [[race]], a pseudo-scientific construct. Racism has been used for centuries by the ruling [[class]] to provide the ideological basis for [[colonialism]], [[slavery]], and [[imperialism]] of other peoples.<ref>Tim Wise (August 27, 2011). [https://web.archive.org/web/20251011193638/https://web.archive.org/web/20180320045954/https://www.timwise.org/2011/08/race-intelligence-and-the-limits-of-science-reflections-on-the-moral-absurdity-of-racial-realism/ Race, Intelligence and the Limits of Science: Reflections on the Moral Absurdity of “Racial Realism”]. ''www.timwise.org''. Archived from the original.</ref>

Characteristic of all varieties of racism are false, misanthropic ideas regarding the pre-historic division of people into "higher" and "lower" races. The higher races, which are often alleged to be the sole creators of civilization and destined to rule over the "inferior race". The lower races, which are said to be incapable of creating or even assimilating high culture, are doomed to be the objects of exploitation or even [[Genocide|extermination]].

Notions concerning the natural inequality of races emerged in slaveholding society, where they served as the justification for the social differences between the [[slaveholders]] and the slaves. During the Medieval period, the inequality of the social estates was supported by assertions of “blood” differences between the [[aristocracy]] and the common [[peasants]] in the [[feudal]] system. During the epoch of the [[primitive accumulation of capital]] (c. 16th-18th centuries), when the [[European]] states first seized colonies, racism served the goals of inhuman exploitation, and it frequently provided the grounds for exterminating the Indigenous Americans, Africans, and many peoples of southern Asia and Oceania.<ref>"Racism". ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia''.</ref>
==Types of racism==
Because racial prejudice can exist in many forms and gradations, the term racism has come to refer to many different things, some much more immediately harmful than others. 

===Overt racism===
Overt racism refers to the explicit belief that some ethnic groups are superior to others. 

===Institutional racism===
Institutional, or systemic racism, is racism understood as a phenomenon proper to a social system, rather than to atomic individuals within it. Theories of systemic racism indicate that simply shaming allegedly racist individuals is ineffective. A popular example of this is the American War on Drugs, which is known to disproportionately affect racial minorities. Whether or not this is the intention of the policy is irrelevant, what matters is that the institutional patterns lead to racist outcomes and breed racist attitudes. It may be entirely ineffective to try to convince cops to be less racist as long as these institutions are in place.

People who hear the term systemic racism often imagine that it means ''systematic'' racism, which is not the case. Usually when people refer to systemic racism, they do not mean that racist actions are being conducted according to a coordinated plan. Usually systemic racism is an uncoordinated phenomenon or side-effect of some other process.

Even in the present, people in developed countries are discriminated against in the professional world on the basis of whether their name sounds non-white. Indeed, minority job applicants in the United States for instance find that their odds in the job market are better when they "whiten" their resumes, with companies being more than twice as likely to call back — this holding true just as much for companies that claim to value diversity as for those that do not.<ref>[https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes-get-more-interviews Minorities Who 'Whiten' Job Resumes Get More Interviews]. HBS Working Knowledge.</ref> A landmark study in 2003 demonstrating that "black-sounding" names were less likely to hear back from employers marked a boom in unconscious bias training and diversity initiatives, but two decades later, new research has shown that prejudice against "black names" has gone largely unchanged.<ref>[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-29/job-applicants-with-black-names-still-less-likely-to-get-the-interview Job Applicants With ‘Black Names’ Still Less Likely to Get Interviews]. Bloomberg.</ref>

==See also==
* [[White supremacy]]
* [[Chauvinism]]
* [[Race]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

[[Category:Pseudo-science]][[Category:Issues]][[Category:Discrimination]]