Racism refers to the beliefs and practices that assume inherent and significant differences exist between the genetics of various groups of human beings; that assume these differences can be measured on a scale of "superior" to "inferior"; and that result in the social, political and economic advantage of one group in relation to others.
In general, a racist practices the separation of groups according to race, and considers one's own race the most valuable and others less valuable. The belief that the character and abilities of individuals are correlated with their race is not necessarily racism, since this can be asserted without implying an inequality in value. The application of this belief in dealing with members of that race, especially with little regard for variations within "races", is known as racial prejudice. Granting or withholding rights or privileges based on race or refusing to associate with persons based on race is racial discrimination.
One view of the origins of racism emphasizes stereotypes, which psychologists generally believe are influenced by cultural factors. People generally respond to others differently based on what they know, which may include superficial characteristics often associated with race. A "white" person walking after dark in a primarily "black" neighborhood in an American city might be anxious for a combination of reasons. The same may be said for an African-American walking in a white neighborhood. A police officer who spends most of his day in that same city encountering criminality or hostility among people of a certain ethnic background might be expected to react negatively to a member of that same ethnic group whom he meets off-duty. A law-abiding African-American man is less likely than a law-abiding white man to view that same police officer as an ally and protector, and more as a threat to his or her personal safety and well-being. In both sets of cases, theories of conditioning may apply.
Racism is usually directed against a minority population, but may also be directed against a majority population. Examples include racial apartheid in South Africa, wherein whites (a minority) discriminated against blacks (a majority) or contemporary United States of America wherein federal legislation has been interpreted as mandating preferential treatment for non whites; this form of racism also occurred during the former colonial rule of such countries as Vietnam (by France) and India (by the United Kingdom). This is known in United States politics as "reverse racism".
Apologists mistakenly claim the United States is free of racism. They point to the comparatively positive view Americans have of immigrants,[13] or the lack of racial genocide in US history when compared to the levels seen in Germany or by European imperialists. Jim Crow laws, Japanese internment camps, and the fate of Cheyenne in the Sand Creek massacre may not have been taken into account are but a few examples of the strong racism that has existed in the US.
In colonial America, before colonial slavery became completely based on racial lines, thousands of African slaves served whites, alongside other whites serving a term of indentured servitude. In some cases for African slaves, a term of service meant freedom and a land grant afterward, but these were rarely awarded, and few black Africans became landowners this way. In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led a revolt against the Governor of Virginia and the system of exploitation he represented: exploitation of poorer colonists by the increasingly wealthy landowners. However, Bacon died, probably of dysentery, and the revolt lost steam.
Historically, when an adversary is identified as "other" based on notions of race or ethnicity (particularly when "other" is construed to mean "inferior"), the means employed by the self-presumed "superior" party to appropriate territory, human chattel, or material wealth often have been more ruthless, more brutal, and less constrained by moral or ethical considerations. Indeed, based on such racist presumptions, the political or moral decision to enter into armed conflict can be made less weighty when one's potential adversaries are "other than," because their lives are perceived as having lesser importance, lesser value. In history, some examples of the brutalizing and dehumanizing effects of racism, are: the trading of smallpox-infested blankets among Native Americans as a biological weapon in order to reduce their population.
White supremacy is an ideology which holds that the white race is superior to other races. White supremacy is most often thought of in connection with anti-black racism and anti-Semitism, though it has also been used to justify discrimination against Native Americans, Chinese, Irish, Southeast Asians, Arabs and others.
For example, politically, socially and economically, the United States before and after Reconstruction was white supremacist, as was apartheid-era South Africa. The extent and nature of white supremacy's continuing influence in Western culture is a subject of ongoing debate.
White supremacy is sometimes used in a more limited sense to indicate a philosophical belief that whites are not only superior to others, but should rule over them. White separatist and white nationalist groups often use this more limited definition in order to distinguish themselves from white supremacists.
White supremacy, as with supremacism in general, is rooted in ethnocentrism and a desire for hegemony. It contains varying degrees of racism and xenophobia. Associations of white supremacy with ethnic cleansing and racial separation are common, but not necessarily intrinsic.
In many states of the United States, non-whites were effectively disenfranchised and prevented from holding government office (or even serving in most government jobs) well into the second half of the 20th century; Native Americans in the U.S. and Canada and Aborigines in Australia were often viewed as little more than obstacles to white settlement, rather than human beings in their own right; many European-settled countries bordering the Pacific Ocean at times severely limited immigration and naturalization from the Asian Pacific countries, usually on an overtly white supremacist basis; the United States allowed individual states to ban interracial marriage as late as 1967 (see Loving v. Virginia); Rhodesia held out as an overtly white supremacist regime until 1979 and South Africa into the 1990s.
In the United States, the ideology of white supremacy was particularly strong. At the time of the nation's founding, there were African American slaves even in such northern states as New York. The U.S. South until the Civil War sustained a plantation economy based on Black slaves. Even in those parts of the South where African Americans constituted the majority, except for the brief period of the Reconstruction (1866-1877), they were routinely disenfranchised; resistance was successfully held down by state and local governments and by organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan who, as late as the early 1960s practiced lynching—extra-judicial execution—with impunity.
Source:Wikipedia
