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Racialism

Racialism is an emphasis on Race (classification of human beings)|race or racial considerations.''The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language'', 4th ed., s.v. "Racialism." Racialism entails a belief in the existence and significance of racial categories, but not necessarily in a hierarchy between the races, or in any political or ideological position of racial supremacy. One racialist position is the controversial claim of a measurable correlation between race and intelligence, or race and crime. Less controversial observations on correlations of, for example, race and height, or race and health|race and disease, are, strictly speaking, also racialist positions. In its current usage, the term ''racialism'' is intended to stand in contrast to the word racism; however, some people, particularly those who deny the existence of race, draw no distinction between the the two words or concepts.

Terminology

While the term ''racism'' refers the social and political effects pertaining to individual attitudes, institutional discrimination, and certain political ideologies based on the concept of Race (classification of human beings)|race, ''racialism'' is the basic epistemological position that not only do races exist, but also that there are significant differences between them. It is important to note, however, that this distribution of meanings between the two terms used to be precisely inverse at the time they were coined: The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' glosses ''racialism'' as "belief in the superiority of a particular race" and gives a 1907 quote as the first recorded use. The term ''racism'' is glossed by the OED as "the theory that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are determined by race", giving 1936 as the first recorded use. Additionally, the OED records ''racism'' as a synonym of ''racialism'': "belief in the superiority of a particular race". By the end of World War II, ''racism'' had acquired the same supremacist connotations as ''racialism'': ''racism'' now implied racial discrimination, racial supremacism and a harmful intent. Since the 1960s, some authors have introduced a new meaning for the less-current ''racialism'': Black civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois introduced ''racialism'' as having the same meaning as ''racism'' had prior to WWII, i.e. the philosophical belief that differences exist between human races, be they Biology|biological, social, psychological or in the realm of the soul. He reserved the use of ''racism'' to refer to the belief that one's particular race is superior to the others (viz., precisely the inverse of the OED definitions).Kwame Anthony Appiah summarises Du Bois' position in his book ''In My Father's House'', chapter 3. Scholar Molefi Kete Asante criticised DuBois for this definition of racialism in ''The Afrocentric Idea'' (1992) where he defines ''racialism'' as "...the view…that there are heritable characteristics, possessed by members of our species, which allow us to divide them into a small set of races, in such a way that all the members of these races share certain traits and tendencies with each other that they do not share with members of any other race." Philosopher Pierre-André Taguieff has used the word ''racialism'' as a perfect synonym of ''scientific racism'', to distinguish it from ''popular racism''; He uses the term ''racialism'' to mean racism that claims to be scientifically founded. Arthur Gobineau's ''An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races'' (1853-55) is an example of such racialism. Human zoos have been an important component of both ''popular racism'' and racialism, popularizing colonialism to the masses and was a subject of curiosity for anthropology and anthropometric studies, until at least the 1930s. The field of whiteness studies examines the idea that race is a category that only applies to groups that are perceived to be different in some way. This area of scholarship scrutinizes the ways in which white people have become the standard against which all races are marked.

Racialism and scientific racism

Current racialist positions have moved away from 19th century classifications and rely instead on Race and genetics|genetics, studying physiological differences between groups such as race and height, but also more complex, and thus controversial, questions like race and intelligence, race and health, and race and crime. In the mid-20th century, support for some of the classical terminology of scientific racism declined among anthropologists: scientific support for the "Caucasoid", "Negroid", "Mongoloid" terminology has fallen steadily over the past century. Whereas 78 percent of the articles in the 1931 volume of ''Journal of Physical Anthropology'' employed these or similar terms, only 36 percent did so in 1965 (see African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)), and just 28 percent did in 1996.Leonard Lieberman, Rodney C. Kirk, and Alice Littlefield, "Perishing Paradigm: Race—1931-99," ''American Anthropologist'' 105, no. 1 (2003): 110-13. A following article in the same issue, by Mat Cartmill and Kaye Brown, questions the precise rate of decline, but agrees that the Negroid/Caucasoid/Mongoloid paradigm has fallen into near-total disfavor. In February 2001, the editors of the medical journal ''Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine'' asked authors to no longer use "race" as explanatory variable, nor to use obsolescent terms. Other peer-reviewed journals, such as the ''New England Journal of Medicine'' and the ''American Journal of Public Health'', have done the same.Frederick P. Rivara and Laurence Finberg, "Use of the Terms Race and Ethnicity," ''Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine'' 155, no. 2 (2001): 119. For similar author's guidelines, see Robert S. Schwartz, "Racial Profiling in Medical Research," ''The New England Journal of Medicine'' 344, no. 18 (2001); M.T. Fullilove, "Abandoning 'Race' as a Variable in Public Health Research: An Idea Whose Time has Come," ''American Journal of Public Health'' 88 (1998): 1297-1298; and R. Bhopal and L. Donaldson, "White, European, Western, Caucasian, or What? Inappropriate Labeling in Research on Race, Ethnicity, and Health," ''American Journal of Public Health'' 88 (1998): 1303-1307. The National Institutes of Health issued a program announcement for grant applications through February 1, 2006, specifically seeking researchers to investigate and publicize the detrimental effects of using racial classifications within the healthcare field. The program announcement quoted the editors of one journal as saying that "analysis by race and ethnicity has become an analytical knee-jerk reflex."See program announcement and requests for grant applications at http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-03-057.html. Racialist vocabulary with inconsistent definitions is still used in medicine to a small extent, even when it has vanished from some census agencies and everyday speech.P.J. Aspinall, "Collective Terminology to Describe the Minority Ethnic Population: The Persistence of Confusion and Ambiguity in Usage," ''Sociology'' 36, no. 4: 804.M.A. Winker, "Measuring Race and Ethnicity: Why and How?," ''The Journal of the American Medical Association'' 292, no. 13 (2004): 1612-14.John Relethford, ''The Human Species: An introduction to Biological Anthropology'', 5th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003), 126. Genetics has renewed racialist perspectives, combining with the racialist perspectives of craniofacial anthropometry.R.S. Cooper, "Race and IQ: Molecular Genetics as Deus ex Machina," ''American Psychologist'' 60, no. 1 (2005): 71-76. Racialism in genetics is criticized as being subjective and otherwise inappropriate, although this tends to be a matter of bias.James F. Wilson et al., "Population Genetic Structure of Variable Drug Response," ''Nature Genetics'' 29 (2001): 265-269.R. Bhopal et al., "Editors' Practice and Views on Terminology in Ethnicity and Health Research," ''Ethnicity & Health'' 2, no. 3 (1997): 223-27.

Racialism as pretext for separatism or supremacism

Alleged scientific findings of racial differences have been used to justify racial separatism. Nazi Germany had a Racial policy of Nazi Germany|racialist policy with its concept of "Großdeutschland" (Greater Germany), alongside its racial ideal based on the nordic race. Malaysia promoted racial supremacism with its policy of "Ketuanan Melayu" (Malay Supremacy), alongside its concept of Bumiputra (Sons of the Soil). In the United States in the 2000s, the term ''racialism'' has been employed by White separatism|white separatist groups such as Christian Identity, Aryan Nations, the American Nazi Party, and White Aryan Resistance, though it has also been used by more innocuous groups and individuals.Approving uses of the term were found on the websites of the Aryan Nations website, American Nazi party, and White Aryan Resistance, all retrieved August 18, 2005.

Footnotes

- Anderson, Gregory M. "Racial Identity, the Apartheid State, and the Limits of Political Mobilization and Democratic Reform in South Africa: The Case of the University of the Western." ''Identity'' 3, no. 1 (2003): 29–52. .
- Appiah, Kwame Anthony. ''In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-19-506852-1.
- Arter, David. "Black Faces in the Blond Crowd: Populist Racialism in Scandinavia", ''Parliamentary Affairs'' 45, no. 3 (1992): 357–372.
- Asante, Molefi Kete. ''The Afrocentric Idea''. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998. ISBN 1-56639-595-X.
- Dobratz, Betty A. ''"White Power, White Pride!": The White Separatist Movement in the United States''. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997.
- Kane, John. "Racialism and Democracy: The Legacy of White Australia." In ''The Politics of Identity in Australia'', ed. Geoffrey Stokes, 117–131. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997. ISBN 052158356X.
- Kennedy, Paul and Nicholls Anthony, eds. ''Nationalist and Racialist Movements in Britain and Germany before 1914''. Saint Antony's College Press, 1981.
- Lee, Woojin and Roemer, John. ''Electoral Consequences of Racialism for Redistribution in the United States: 1972–1992'' (California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and social Sciences, 2002).
- Melvern, Linda. ''Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwanda Genocide''. London: Verso, 2004.
- Ndebele, Nhlanhla. "The African National Congress and the Policy of Non-Racialism: A Study of the Membership Issues." ''Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies'' 29, no. 2 (2002): 133–146.
- Odocha, O. "Race and Racialism in Scientific Research and Publication in the Journal of the National Medical Association." ''Journal of the National Medical Association'' 92, no. 2 (2002): 96–98. .
- Kelefa Sanneh|Sanneh, Kelefa. "After the Beginning Again: The Afrocentric Ordeal." ''Transition'' 10, no. 3 (2001): 66–89.
- Snyder, Louis L. ''The Idea of Racialism: Meaning and History''. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1962.
- Taylor, Paul C. "Appiah's Uncompleted Argument: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Reality of Race." ''Social Theory and Practice'' 26, no. 1 (2000): 103–128.
- Thompson, Walter Thomas. ''James Anthony Froude on Nation and Empire: A Study in Victorian Racialism''. London: Taylor & Francis, 1998.
- UNESCO General Conference. ''Declaration of Fundamental Principles concerning the Contribution of the Mass Media to Strengthening Peace and International Understanding, to the Promotion of Human Rights and to Countering Racialism, Apartheid and Incitement to War'' (University of Hawaii, 1978).
- Reggie White's Speech before the Wisconsin State Assembly (click 778)
- Zubaida, Sami, ed. ''Race and Racialism''. London: Tavistock, 1970.

External links

- John Henrik Clarke - Race: An Evolving Issue in Western Social Thought Category:Core issues in ethics Category:Eugenics Category:Race Category:Race and intelligence controversy

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