Salon 1

So we have written a series of posts and comments lately discussing racism.  I think I would like to write one more defining racism.  I think that writing such a post would not have been neccessary 10 years ago – that the average adult had a decent understanding of the concept.  However, recent events (e.g., 9/11, the subsequent war, and the immigration problem) have caused a rampant misue of the word and improper application of policies and subsequent fear.  Hence, I feel it is currently neccessary to clarify.

Racism is the belief that a certain race is biologically inferior (or superior depeding on the context of the sentence).  Now let’s break down this statement.

Race = an ethnic groupd defined solely by their genetics (i.e., not locale or culture) and sharing distinct geneotypes and phenotypes unique and common to that group.  These physical traits (e.g., hair type, shapes of facial features, etc.) are distinct within these races.  Skin color varies broadly within each and across each such that there is great overlap and is therefore not a distinguishing feature.  There are three (3) and only three (3) races on this planet.  The technical terms are caucosoid, negroid, and mongoloid.  In slang terms, white, black, and Asian.  This means the following ethnic groups are not races:  Hispanic, Native American, East Indian, Pacific Islander, Inuit, Arabic, Hebrew, etc.  They are ethnic groups within one of the 3 races defined above.

Biologically implies that the differences are genetic and inherent with the group and therefore not attributed to culture, environment, upbringing, etc. 

The inferior / superior term has an obivous connotation,  but is not defined or scoped in this context.  What is meant by inferior when comparing two populations?  Does it refer to physical ability, intelligence, size, behaviour, etc?  An indivual can be superior or inferior when compared to another individual at a specific task; but to suggest that all memebers of a group are superior or inferior across all tasks is silly if not impossible to prove.  But it is not neccessary to attempt to define a component of a theory that is flawed to being with, and I say so for the following reason.  Is the inability to get along with others a superior trait?  Obviously not.

In addition, it should be noted that racism is different from stereotyping and prejudice, although they are related, and I will write separate posts defining these concepts as well.  To relate, stereotyping is a psychological mechanism that normally serves a positive purpose, but can also cause racist beliefs.  Racism is a belief that causes prejudice behavior.  Ethnic groups are divisions of peoples based on any of the following criteria:  race, culture, geographic location, religion,  other genetics.

In addition, there is an inherent logic within many people based on binary thinking that assumes that if two groups are truly different (e.g., with respect to a trait), then one group is inferior and the other is superior. The truth is that groups can be different and neither be wholly inferior or superior because there are many traits that define a race, and all of those would have to be weighed and compared – which is essentially impossible. Not to mention that the variance in most traits across individuals within a group is probably greater than across groups.