Racism

Racism

Introduction

"Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason." Abraham J. Heshel (http://thinkexist.com, 2012)

Any action, belief or practice reflecting the racial worldview is termed as racism. It is the ideology or dogma that humans are segregated into exclusive and distinct races or biological entities; that there is an underlying connection between inherited physical characteristics and traits of intellect, personality, morality, and other cultural behavioral attributes, and that some races are intrinsically superior to others. (Britannica, 2012)

Especially in the 18th century, racism was the spirit of North American slavery and the western Europeans' colonization and empire building activities. The notion of race was made up to blow up the dissimilarities between Whites & Black that is people of European descent in the United States and those of African origin whose antecedents had been unwillingly transported to the Americas as slaves. By signifying Africans and their ancestors as lesser or minor human beings, the advocates of slavery tried to validate and justify this system of exploitation whereas simultaneously representing the United States as a supporter and defender of human liberty, with human rights, independent and democratic institutions, boundless prospects, and equality. The disagreement between slavery and the philosophy of human equality, associated with a ideology of human freedom and self-esteem, appeared to insist the dehumanization of the enslaved people.

Racism had established and extended around the world by the 19th century. Leaders in many nations started to feel the ethnic constituents of their own societies, generally the segregation of groups on the basis of their religion or language, in racial terms and to allocate superior and inferior races.

Both natural and human resources of the low- status races were exploited particularly in colonized areas. Discrimination against them turned out to be a common practice in many areas around the globe. Feelings of bitterness and resentment were generated in the enslaved and colonized races as a consequence of the feelings and expressions of racial dominance accompanied with colonialism. Even after the independence of colonized countries, the feelings of both supremacy and hostility continued.

Many conflicts happened around the world in the last half of the 20th century and majority of them were inferred in racial terms although their basis were in the ethnic aggressions that have extendedly distinguished many human societies for instance Arabs and Jews, English and Irish etc. Racism depicts an approval of the profound ...