Racism

Overt and Discrete Practices

Practices of racism can range from overt to discrete. Overt practices of racism include public denunciation of particular races, membership in race supremacy groups, and using certain races as scapegoats for social problems. Discrete practices of racism include assuming characteristic traits based on race and barring equal access to resources to nondominant races. Members of different ethnicities or religions who are perceived to be of “inferior” races are also subject to racism.

History of Racism

The conceptualization of racism has evolved considerably. Prior to the 20th century, displays of [Page 579]racism were the social norm; today, racism is generally considered socially deviant. Historically, racism has taken many forms. In Europe prior to the Middle Ages, there are no clear instances of racism as we define it today. In the 13th and 14th centuries, Christians' association of Jews with the devil and witchcraft are indicative of what might be called preracism, since even Jews who converted to Christianity continued to be discriminated against for centuries, and Jews who maintained their traditional faith were subject to outbreaks of persecution.

The Renaissance and Reformation periods brought Europeans into contact with darker-skinned people from outside Europe. This in turn caused a stir in assumptions about the culture and characteristic traits of the non-Europeans. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the slave trade in America deepened the belief in racism. Native Americans were too few and too susceptible to diseases to work as laborers for the original 13 British colonies, and the need for cheap labor was high. As a result, Africans were brought to America as slaves. Traders and owners rationalized slavery through the biblical story of Ham who, in the book of Genesis, was cursed to be a slave for having disobeyed his father. Because Ham settled in Africa, his presumably black descendants purportedly inherited his curse. In 1667, Virginia decided to keep slaves in bondage on the basis of their race rather than on account of the biblical rationale; this solidified the justification of black servitude. Laws passed in the late 17th century made cross-racial (white and black) marriage illegal and discrimination against biracial children was prevalent. The underlying implication of the laws was that dark-skinned individuals were of lower stature than light-skinned individuals.

The Enlightenment period witnessed an increasing rejection of the biblical rationale as an argument for the singularity of the human race. Ethnologists in the 18th century, who considered the human race as part of the natural world, categorized it into three to five races. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, those in favor of slavery wrote that races were composed of distinct species.

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