Racialism

Racialism, or race realism, is a term for an emphasis on race or racial considerations. Currently, racialism entails a belief in the existence and significance of racial categories, but not necessarily that any absolute hierarchy between the races has been demonstrated by a rigorous and comprehensive scientific process. Racialists usually reject some claims of racial superiority (such as racial supremacy), but may explicitly or implicitly subscribe to others, such as that races have acted in morally superior or inferior ways, at least in certain instances or periods of history.

Definitions and differences

W. E. B. Du Bois, 1918

One definition of the term racialism is the belief that the human species is naturally divided into distinct biological categories called races. It is the basic epistemological position that not only do races exist, but also that there are significant differences between them. This is to be contrasted with racism, which also assumes that some races are superior to others; or, in an altered meaning, refers to discrimination based on the concept of race.

In the modern English language, racism is a broad category encompassing many separate claims or impulses, such as chauvinism, identity politics, institutional racism, etc., and it is often used as a pejorative epithet that many would want to avoid for various reasons. When terms such as "racialism" and "race realism" are used, this is more commonly people describing themselves, or attempting a more value-neutral terminology which is assumed to be more appropriate for (scientifically) objective communication or analysis. Self-described racialists or race realists often wish to avoid many of the popular associations of racism that are considered pejorative, or involve extremism or illegal activities, such as: hatred, xenophobia, (malignant or forced) exploitation, separatism, racial supremacy, mass murder (for the purpose of genocide), genocide denial, vigilantism (hate crimes, terrorism), etc.

However, this distribution of meanings between the two terms used to be precisely inverse at the time they were coined: The Oxford English Dictionary defined racialism as "belief in the superiority of a particular race" and gives a 1907 quote as the first recorded use. The term racism was defined by the OED as "[t]he 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: In 1903, Black nationalist 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 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).[2]

Cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah criticised DuBois for this definition of racialism in 'My Father's House' (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." He also stated that:

Racialism is not, in itself, a doctrine that must be dangerous, even if the racial essence is thought to entail moral and intellectual dispositions. Provided positive moral qualities are distributed across the races, each can be respected, can have its "separate but equal" place.

Race realism (or racial realism) is a term similar to the current meaning of racialism.

Today, some psychologists point to studies that suggest racialist beliefs result from dismissal of modern population genetics.

Identity politics

Grisso wrote in the magazine Africans Unbound that:

While [Nelson] Mandela, like the others, is clearly not racist, he also must be counted as racialist, because his struggle against apartheid was predicated on the race-based solidarity of those who were enslaved, based on race, under the system of apartheid: you cannot fight racism without introducing race as a predicate of your action. So Malcolm [X] and Mandela, both, have to be counted racialist. I say that knowing as I do so that Mandela has called for a "non-racial" South Africa. But the sense in which he means that, I believe, is the same sense in which Malcolm would call for an end to racism: the call is for an end to race-based oppression, rather than for an end to "race first" solidarity.

— Grisso, Africans Unbound (magazine)

Richard T. Ford noted that, although "there is no necessary correspondence between the ascribed identity of race and one's culture or personal sense of self" and "group difference is not intrinsic to members of social groups but rather contingent o[n] the social practices of group identification," the social practices of identity politics may coerce individuals into the "compulsory" enactment of "prewritten racial scripts."

According to Yasuko Takezawa, a solution to the racism embedded in anti-racist identity politics is simply to stop perpetuating racialism, including the use of racial labeling.

See also

• Anti-discrimination law
• Caste
• Racism
• Aversive racism
• Xenophobia
• Identity politics
• Framing (social sciences)
• Population genetics
• Discrimination
• Social stratification
• Covert racism
• Microaggression theory
• Labeling theory

Further reading

• Kwame Anthony Appiah (1993) – In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture – ISBN 0195068521
• Who, What, Why? "Are racism and racialism the same?" BBC News Magazine, Last updated online: Tuesday, 13 March 2007, 12:25 GMT
• Agustín Fuentes, Ph.D, "Race Is Real...But Not in the Way Many People Think, Busting the myth of biological race," in Psychology Today, Published on April 9, 2012.
• Thomas Sowell Discussing "Racial Quotas" with William F. Buckley, Jr. on Firing Line (1981), available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JENCxjbARFM, last checked: October 13, 2014, 1:58 a.m..
• Race, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.