Human beings are inherently racist

The story so far..

Definitions

• Racism (n.) a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to govern others.

Origins

• Racism is first attested 1936 (from the French racisme 1935), originally in the context of Nazi theories.

• Racism and Racist replaced earlier words racialism (1907) and racialist (1917) both often used in a British or South African context

What is race is this context? Suggested were…

• Each of the major subdivisions of humankind, each having distinctive physical characteristics

• A tribe or nation

• A genus, species, breed or variety of animal, plants or micro-organisms

Biological categorisation

The hierarchy of biological classification's eight major taxonomic ranks, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia. A kingdom contains one or more phyla. Intermediate minor rankings are not shown.

What are the origins of racism?The anthropological argument

• Banding together and communicating effectively gives human beings superiority over other predators

• Banding together requires social cohesion within a group• Social cohesion may be created by fear of exclusion• Fear of exclusion is created by: understanding the benefits of

membership of the group; fear of loss of these benefits; fear of ‘the other’.

• Physical characteristics are the simplest way of identifying ‘the other’

• We are all descended from the successful early humans who worked this idea most successfully, therefore we have this capacity for the ‘fear of the other’ built into our social structures.

• True? ~ or a load of old dingo’s kidneys?

Human beings are inherently racist

New readers start here..

Back to the notion of race for a moment

• If we accept that ‘correctly’ race is about differences in physical characteristics, then what ‘race’ is really is the issue of different ‘breeds’ within the Human Race or Species.

• Proof of this? ~ humans can inter-breed successfully because they are part of the same species, in the same way that a Siamese cat can inter-breed successfully with a ‘moggie’ of indeterminate breed.

So…?

• ‘Race’ as a type of classification is very imprecise, even though most people think that it isn’t.

• A classification system into 5 general groups is often believed to be generally accepted when it isn’t

• 1) Mongoloid (Asian and American Indian)2) Caucasoid (European)3) Australoid (Australian and oceanic)4) Negroid (east African black)5) Capoid (south African black)

Where is the logic?

• Racism, as generally used as a term and a belief today, suggests that one group of humans, living in a particular place, are inherently superior to any other group of humans living elsewhere because of their physical characteristics?

• Physical characteristics are a long-term evolutionary response to the physical circumstances in which one finds oneself

So if we are not talking about physical differences confer

superiority what are we talking about?

• When we use the term ‘race’ are we really closer to the ‘tribe’ meaning, than the biological ‘breed’ meaning?

• If so, what do we mean by ‘tribe’?

So, is it all about the family (in the very widest meaning of the word)?

• Do families have characteristics?

• What are those characteristics?

• How do those characteristics persist?

• How do those characteristics change?

So when we talk about ‘race’ in the common sense of ‘racism’ should

we really be talking about ethnicity? • If that is the case then what on Earth does

ethnicity mean?

• Where does your ethnical group come from?

• What relevance does it have?

Ethnicity ~ a definition of sorts• (n ) Ethnic group (or ethnicity) is a group of people whose members

identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture (often including a shared religion) and an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy (marrying exclusively within a given ethnic group).

• Members of an ethnic group are conscious of belonging to an ethnic group

• Ethnic identity is further marked by the recognition from others of a group's distinctiveness. Processes that result in the emergence of such identification are called ethnogenesis. (By self-invention, ethnic groups are "present at their own creation", in the phrase of E. P. Thompson).