Roots of Racism

Historically, racism has been an ideology of domination, a system of maintaining white supremacy by creating and maintaining structures that accord preferential treatment to white people and marginalise the others. For the victim, it is a systemic attack on one’s personal worth, dignity, liberty and security experienced through employment, the public services, police, media, legislation, etc.

It arose out of western theories and attitudes of racial superiority used to justify slavery, conquest and dispossession. These later evolved into an state-sanctioned or institutionalised system of discrimination, exclusion and oppression. Racism is not just a British problem – it is embedded in western culture, especially in the English speaking countries. Given the long political and economic hegemony of the West, white people are conditioned to regard non-Europeans as inferior.

The racism of Christian Europe is over 500 years old. When Columbus landed in the Caribbean in 1492, he recorded that he was overwhelmed by the warmth and hospitality of the native Indians but he was not prepared to regard them as equals. Before long he was recommending to his royal sponsors: “They will make fine servants.” Soon he and his men enslaved some and slaughtered many thousands.

British racism (outside of Ireland) is some 400 years old. In Britain itself, around 1600 Queen Elizabeth I thought there were too many blacks in London and wanted them deported. It was the slave traders who had dumped these blacks in London. When British groups migrated to North America early in the 17^th century, they refused to accept the natives as equals, killed them by the thousands and took possession of their land. Thereafter, Britain carried their racism to every non-white country they occupied or colonised, systematically enforcing discriminatory practices and segregation against the natives at all levels, including church services.

David Hume, Scottish philosopher (1711-76): “I am apt to suspect the negroes and all other species of men to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation other than white…”

Sir Francis Galton, English scientist & Darwin's cousin (c 1869) : “Blacks as a race are grossly inferior even to the lowest of white people.”

Cecil Rhodes, English imperialist (1853-1902): “I contend that we are the first race in the world and the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race…”

Encyclopedia Britannica (1911): “Mentally the Negro is inferior to the white… the mental constitution is very similar to a child’s...”

The roots of racism can be traced to

· an entrenched belief that white people are inherently ‘superior’ and their privileged status must be maintained at all costs,

· fears that British or European values may be threatened or swamped by alien cultures.

These attitudes of superiority have persisted despite 1000 years of Christianity and need to be understood in the historical context of slavery, colonialism and today’s neo-colonialism. Racism has been socially constructed over centuries and current notions of race are an integral part of the history of western Europe. Relations with the non-European world have always been defined in terms of domination and control, not of equality and mutual respect. Europeans never cared to learn from other cultures. Non-whites were not just different; they were dismissed as inferior if not downright savage. All Euro encounters with indigenous peoples were violent. The European imperial states entered foreign lands not with visas but with a weapon that kills - guns. They promptly went about brutally colonizing distant lands, importing Africans as slaves, expropriating their resources, exploiting slave labour or fencing off the natives in inhospitable reservations. Side by side, they sent missionaries to christianize the ‘heathens’ of these lands but the converts were scrupulously segregated from the European residents.

Racism has spread all over the world with the global spread of western influence and is propagated through systems of education, advertising, state propaganda and economic pressure. Today the West remains committed to an economic system (neo-liberalism or corporate capitalism), which together with western-dominated international finance & trade bodies systematically exploit and impoverish the Third World. The new economic order and racism go hand in hand. Racism has become an integral part of Western culture, institutionalised and normalised.