How Racism Effect Society's Perspective

Introduction

The word racism is built into the mare magnum of terms describing situations of violent conflict between people on grounds belonging to groups or ethnicities. However, their equivalence to xenophobia, anti-Semitism, discrimination, etc.., leads to inaccuracies and ambiguities, and it is appropriate to point out what are their defining features. Existing problems indicate that racism comes from the many aspects presented by the term: it is an ideology as well as behavior (Ellis n.d.). There are racist and racist behaviors, although they may be intertwined, which can also exist separately. Racism is dominated by biological factors or ethicist variables depending upon one's arguments. Racism biologist and ethnicity are phenomena arising in different historical circumstances. Depending on the circumstances of each space or society, racism can be realized in specific, unconnected events or organized in a political, economic or cultural form (Alderfer & Weiss 2003) (as the case of Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africans). Some experts advocate the idea that racism has existed since the early social formations, while others place it specifically in the contemporary world. We do not know whether racism is universal or particular? If the construction of all societies has clearly ethnocentric features, like Euro centrism, we may call racism as universal. It depends on which ideological and cultural forms it belongs to the world, and how it has developed in modern times.

Discussion and Analysis

Racism is a set of beliefs, practices, and social structures that treats groups of human beings socially defined by unalterable, often physical, attributes (races) as inherently unequal. Racism is a form of subordination and exclusion. It is a part of the power structure of institutions and social relations. Racism is sustained by coercion and consent, and it is expressed in prejudice, discrimination, oppression, violence, or, in some extreme cases, genocide. This broader perspective on racism, epitomized in the work of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963), is dominant in political science, sociology, and social anthropology (Ellis, p. 2).

In everyday life, the term racism is often used loosely with respect to subordination or hostility toward a group. From a historical perspective, racism is considered as a modern phenomenon. Besides the discussion on the existence of “proto-racism” in ancient Greek or Rome, the emergence of modern racism is connected to the Enlightenment and the appearance of scientific theories of the evolution of humankind. The search for the biological foundation of human behavior led to essentialist interpretations of the differences between groups of human beings, although the analytical distinction between biology and culture was increasingly used: One of the characteristics of racism is that the cultural characteristics and potentials of groups are seen as basically determined by biological differences.

Politically, racism is associated with conquest, colonialism, enslavement, and genocide. With the emergence of nationalism, racism became part of the social construction of national homogeneity. The emphasis on the cultural uniqueness of a nation-state led to certain types of culturally based exclusionary ideologies—for example, in romantic nationalism, often associated with the ideas of Johann ...