Racism: history of the concept

Racism as a widespread social phenomenon rose in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries as European explorers in unfamiliar lands encountered indigenous peoples who looked, spoke, and lived very differently. Racial hierarchies were invented to help those in power justify the exploitation of other peoples, up to the level of denying their humanity. In particular, the development of the Atlantic slave trade was deeply connected to the spread and entrenchment of racism.

Origins

The concept of race is an invention of the early modern world. The ancient and medieval worlds generally did not identify persons by race. Groups and individuals were recognized during these earlier periods in geographic terms. Hence, a person from Africa would have been called “Ethiopian” or “Egyptian,” depending on where they lived, as opposed to being called “Black.”

Racial emphasis came into use as a support for imperialism and its accompanying institution of slavery. Although the origin of the word “race” is obscure, experts believe that it began as a loose description of similar groups. This description originally was not restricted to biologically similar people. For example, in 1678, John Bunyan in Pilgrim’s Progress wrote of a “race of saints.”

The first English record of the use of the word “race” was in 1508. In that year, William Dunbar in a poem spoke of “bakbyttaris if sindry racis” (backbiters of sundry races).

It was not until 1684 that the term “race” was used to designate skin color and other distinguishable physical features. It was then used by the Frenchman François Bernier, who used his experiences as a traveler and physician to employ such an application.

It appears, however, that such classifications did not become commonplace immediately. It was only after science adopted the concept of race as an explanation for human variation that it became a broadly accepted tenet.

Citations of Earlier Prejudices

Some scholars, such as Winthrop Jordan and Joseph Harris, have documented evidence of racial prejudice back to the earliest contact between Europeans and peoples living in other regions of the world. These actions appear to be based more on geographic differences than on color differences. For example, fantastic fables about Africans circulated among Europeans. Equally preposterous stories about Europeans, however, circulated in the ancient and medieval world among Europeans. Thus, such views seem to be the products of encounters between different peoples in an age that was characterized by superstition and fear of the unknown.

Religious Influences

From the beginning of the European enslavement of Africans, religion was an element in the process. As early as 1442, Pope Eugene IV granted absolution to Portuguese seamen who, under the direction of Prince Henry the Navigator, took African “souls” and sold them. Within ten years, however, it became unnecessary to ask for absolution, because Pope Nicholas V gave the king of Spain his blessing to enslave “pagans.” Christopher Columbus’s writings show that he used this same justification for the enslavement of Native Americans. Chapels were included in the forts where European enslavers held enslaved people. These forts, also known as “slave factories” or “castles,” were erected along the west coast of Africa. Their presence demonstrated organized Christianity’s approval of slavery.

At first, the Spanish provided for enslaved Africans to be manumitted upon their conversion to Christianity, since it was considered wrong for one Christian to hold another Christian in bondage regardless of the bondsman’s race. As conversions to Christianity became commonplace among enslaved Africans, however, manumissions became uncommon. By the middle of the seventeenth century, Europeans began to identify dark skin with a lifetime of slavery.

The Bible was used to “prove” that Black people were a cursed race. A favorite scriptural citation for this purpose was Noah’s curse upon his grandson Canaan because his father Ham had mocked his own father (Genesis 9:20–27). This scripture was given a racial interpretation by hermeneutics who declared that Ham was the father of the Black race and that Noah’s specific condemnation of Canaan should be expanded to include all Black people. Thus, religious justification for the enslavement of Black people evolved from the belief that it was immoral for a Christian to enslave another Christian, regardless of race, to the nineteenth-century idea that Africans were eternally condemned to be servants of others. By the nineteenth century, proponents of slavery declared that it simply was the so-called natural order for Africans to be “hewer[s] of wood and drawer[s] of water” for the more advanced races. As the “peculiar institution” of slavery became more prevalent, the argument to legitimate it—especially from a religious perspective.

Cultural Racism

Both slavery and imperialism used cultural arguments to control other races. The racist doctrine of the “White man’s burden” said that Europeans had a superior culture and a moral responsibility to impose their culture on people of supposedly deprived races. Thus, enslavers rationalized that enslaved Africans who were kept on a plantation would benefit from their close association with their enslavers. Proponents of slavery and imperialism said that Africans, if left alone, would languish in ignorance and backwardness.

This paternalistic view was not unique to American slavery. Both Europe and the United States used the concept of the White man’s burden to justify and legitimize taking the lands of Indigenous people, destroying their traditional ways of life, enslaving them, and killing them. In each territory, White paternalists characterized Indigenous people as uncivilized savages who could only be saved by exposure to the White man’s superior culture.

This ethnocentric and racist view reflected the belief that many White people held during the age of imperialism. They saw themselves as God’s gift to humanity. Officially, this concept came to be known as manifest destiny. The imperialists believed that they had a mission to expand beyond others’ borders to uplift those people to the imperialists’ supposedly superior level. The imperialists ignored the achievements of people who were not White and attributed every important aspect of human civilization to White genius. Such a polemical view of culture helped to solidify White supremacy and the existence of racism.

Scientific Racism

The year 1798 has been cited as marking the beginning of scientific racism. This later form of racism was not restricted to geographic differences or skin color alone. It was used to slight Jews and Catholics as well. In its earliest use, scientific racism was employed mainly as a justification for economic inertia. Thus, it was said that human deprivation could not be relieved through charitable donations. According to the proponents of scientific racism, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, or individuals would simply be throwing money away if they were to invest it in the segment of humanity that, in their opinion, was hopelessly and irretrievably at the bottom of the social and economic ladder.

This employment of a pseudoscientific justification for racism was expanded with the introduction of social Darwinism in the late nineteenth century. Purveyors of this doctrine imported Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution from biology and applied it to a social context. Whereas Darwin himself had only theorized about species, the social Darwinists declared that one race was superior to another because it had evolved further and faster than had the inferior group. A chain of evolutionary progress was created that placed Black people at the bottom and White people of the Nordic ancestry at the summit of humanity. Thus, they portrayed Black people as animalistic, subhuman, and therefore incapable of higher thought, while Nordic Europeans were said to be natural leaders.

The use of pseudoscience to prop up racism has probably been one of the most pernicious developments in the history of racism. When zoology, anatomy, and other fields of scientific study advanced explanations of human differences, they were given serious hearings. Consequently, the layperson accepted the scientist’s word as authoritative in spite of the theoretical and unproven nature of the claims.

Economic Racism

When slavery was legal in the United States, the supporters of slavery advanced the argument that the institution was necessary for the benefit of Black people. It was declared that they were childlike and incapable of self-support. As long as they remained enslaved, they had a haven that protected them from want. Slavery’s defenders used this argument to portray slavery as advantageous to enslaved people. Even after the Civil War, many southern historians continued to use the economic argument to show that slavery was an economic boon to Black people. They pointed to postbellum vagabondage and government dependency among formerly enslaved people as proofs that Black people were better off on plantations, where they were forced to labor but given food, clothing, and shelter.

Those who advanced such proslavery arguments failed to acknowledge that the violence, exploitation, and neglect of enslavement and continuing racism was responsible for the deplorable conditions in which formerly enslaved people lived. Also, the defenders of slavery never addressed the formerly enslaved people and antebellum free Black people who, in the face of tremendous difficulties, still managed not only to support themselves and their families but also to become entrepreneurs, landowners, and employers.

Even in the twentieth century, economics was used as a defense for racism: South Africa’s apartheid policy and business transactions carried on there were justified by American and European corporations. In the wake of an international call for divestiture, these companies argued that their continued operation in South Africa was for the good of the Black and Colored people at the bottom of the economic ladder. Divestiture would deprive these two groups of a livable wage. Therefore, it was prudent for them to continue to work for these corporations while the corporations used their influence to effect change.

Social Segregation

After the American Civil War and Reconstruction, so-called Jim Crow laws were instituted throughout the southern United States. These laws segregated society on the basis of race in practically every area of life. Except in menial jobs, Black people could not enter White restaurants, hotels, schools, or any other “Whites only” public facility. When they were allowed in the same buildings as White people, Black people had separate, well-defined places such as balconies or basements to occupy.

Most southern states reinforced their segregation policies with laws that prohibited interracial marriages. Propagandists repeatedly warned that having one drop of Black blood meant that one was Black. To the racists, procreation between people of different races was a deadly sin.

Resulting from such hysteria was a fear of Black people that frequently manifested itself in the worst imaginable forms of brutalization. In the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, it was common for Black Americans to be lynched at the hands of White gangs without due process of law. The most common offense was the rape, real or imagined, of White women. Frequently, it was the latter. An infamous case of this sort occurred when fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was lynched in Money, Mississippi, in 1955. Apparently, Till's only alleged offense was that he called a White woman, Carolyn Bryant, “baby.” Bryant's husband and half-brother-in-law were arrested for lynching Till but an all-White jury found them 'not guilty,' saying that prosecutors had not positively identified Till's body. Bryant later recanted her testimony and said that Till had never harassed, threatened, or touched her.

Institutional Racism

With the massive urbanization of Black Americans in the United States in the twentieth century and the subsequent residential segregation in cities, the stage was set for a shift toward institutional racism, or systemic racism in a society’s structures and organizations. This form of racism is more covert than individual racism, which is person-to-person, emotional, and blunt. Institutional racism resulted in a denial of equal access to goods and services by predominantly Black sections of the cities. For example, higher prices and less desirable products were more often found in predominantly Black and Latino inner cities than in White suburbs. (Many examples emerged outside the United States, as well.)

Since this type of discrimination manifests itself primarily through institutions rather than individuals, many people were simply oblivious to its existence. For example, White suburbanites living in mostly White communities had less contact with Black people and were ignorant of the ways in which society's institutions discriminated against Black people and other people of color. As a result, many White suburbanites became prone to blame the socioeconomic challenges seen in inner cities on the residents’ supposed lack of initiative and concern—a racist rationale—rather than on institutional racism.

Institutional racism has been suggested as a reason why disproportionate numbers of Americans who are people of color are unemployed, underemployed, and incarcerated in prisons. Despite affirmative action policies and legal gains during the twentieth century, Black Americans and other people of color long continued to be excluded or ignored by many institutions, such as employers, lenders, and investment agencies. This kind of structural inequality can limit opportunities, creating a feedback loop of negative social outcomes that in turn can reinforce racist perspectives.

In the early twenty-first century, there was a fresh wave of attention to issues of racism and social justice. Some observers considered the 2008 election of Barack Obama, the first Black US president, as evidence of a new post-racial era. However, many scholars and other experts quickly associated the sharp partisan opposition to the Obama administration with lingering racist attitudes, whether overt or covert, while critics also pointed out that structural inequality remained prevalent in many areas of society. Increased academic emphasis on systemic racism and other concepts like critical race theory (CRT) also fed into a pronounced conservative backlash against progressive antiracism efforts. These trends were also not limited to the unique race relations of the United States. Watchdog groups worldwide warned that broad populist and nationalist movements in many countries often increasingly incorporated racialized ideology, signaling the significant power of racism despite ongoing attempts to combat its influence.

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