Race and Racism

Race is a powerful idea. It has been created over time to support beliefs that view some groups of people as superior and some as inferior.

Racism is different from racial prejudice, hatred or discrimination. It combines racial prejudice with social and institutional power. Racism is both a system of advantage based on race and a system of oppression based on race. For instance, eighteenth century Dutch physician and anatomist, Petrus Camper, developed the “facial angle” theory. The theory determined that modern humans have a facial angle between 70 and 90 degrees. The angle is formed by drawing two lines: one horizontally from the nostril to the ear, the other perpendicular from the advancing part of the upper jawbone to the most prominent part of the forehead. Using this theory, he claimed that ancient Greco-Roman statues represented the Classical sense of beauty with an angle near 100 degrees. Then he ranked Europeans at an angle of 90 degrees, Asians at 80, Africans at 70, and Orangutans at 58 degrees. From this work, contemporaries of Camper determined that Africans were the furthest from the Classical sense of beauty. These ideas were used for scientific racism in the late 18th and 19th centuries and fed into the ideas of eugenic measurement on the basis of preconceived racist dogma.

Race is an idea or social construct, and not an actual biological fact.

Studies made famous by renowned scientists, like Camper, show how the idea of race has been created and perpetuated over time. Race as an idea or social construct, and not an actual biological fact, has been used to oppress some groups of people and advantage others.

LET’S LOOK AT SOME EXAMPLES

In the United States racial designations have changed over time. Some groups that are considered “white” in the United States today were considered “non-white” before. For example, in U.S. Census data, mass media and popular culture, Irish, Italian and Jewish people have, over time, been considered both white and people of color. The concept of “white” was constructed to combine certain European groups into a majority, which involved shedding parts of their original culture to achieve the advantages of belonging to the white group.

The construction of a white majority created a society that made white “normal,” disadvantaged BIPOC, and perpetuated white supremacy at a national level.

A second example to look at is the racial categorization of people outside of the U.S. For instance, apartheid laws in South Africa were founded upon placing individuals in one of four groups: ‘native’ (denoting those of indigenous African background), ‘colored’ (denoting those of mixed “race,” usually of “black” and “white”), ‘Asian’ (denoting those of indigenous Asian background), or ‘white’ (denoting those of indigenous European background). The simple contradiction of terms between the U.S. and South Africa shows that these racial categories were constructed and then used to segregate the population with the same goal of benefiting the “white” category.

WHAT IS RACISM?

Racism is often understood as individual actions intentionally, or even unintentionally, taken toward another person. This, however, is a very narrow and incomplete view of what racism really is. Racism is different from racial prejudice, hatred or discrimination. It combines racial prejudice with social and institutional power. Racism is both a system of advantage based on race and a system of oppression based on race.

Racism is one group having the power to carry out systematic discrimination.

Racism is one group having the power to carry out systematic discrimination through the institutional policies and practices of the society and by shaping the cultural beliefs and values that support those racist policies and practices. Let’s look at how these forms of racism can be expressed.

EXPRESSIONS OF RACISM

Institutions express racism broadly throughout our society. Institutions like Housing, Government, Education, Media, Business, Health Care, Criminal Justice, Employment, Labor, Politics, and Church affect every aspect of our lives, and therefore, have a lot of power. These institutions express racism through the structures, systems and policies they create, which give advantages for white people and oppression for People of Color. A few examples are:

• People of Color under-represented and misrepresented or stereotyped on television
• Racially biased standardized tests used to determine who will be admitted to colleges
• Historic and ongoing breaking of treaties with indigenous Native American communities
• Reliance on low-paying undocumented immigrant labor by farms and factories.

Dominant culture express racism broadly throughout our society as well, but in different ways. Culture defines and shapes norms, values, beliefs, and to a large extent, reality to advantage white people and oppress People of Color. A few examples are:

• Thin, blond, white women as the basis for our society’s standard of beauty
• Women on welfare assumed to be Black or Brown and portrayed as irresponsible while white collar fraud in the business community is costing the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars a year
• Requiring people to speak English historically (Indigenous peoples) and today (people from Central and South America) as a way of deliberately destroying community and culture
• People with non-white sounding names find it more difficult to get responses to their job applications.

Racism is more than interpersonal prejudice or bias based on race.

When we define racism, we have to look at it as more than interpersonal prejudice or bias based on race. When we limit our definition of racism to a personal level rather than an institutional level, our conversations about what is racist often devolve into a discussion of “what’s in a person’s heart” rather than the impact of their beliefs and behaviors. This limits racism to only intentional and conscious acts and erases the real impact of unintentional behavior and large-scale consequences. Defining racism in a systemic way doesn’t ignore individual instances of overtly hateful behavior, but instead expands our understanding of what is “racist” to include less conscious, unconscious and institutional expressions.