From "racial theory" to "racism"

Before considering racism, it is an important methodological point to distinguish historically when the concept of "racism" became known as such. Historians disagree largely when "race" emerged as a concept, ranging from those who believe aspects of it have always existed among humans, to those who place it as a concept separate from general distrust of "difference" (in which case it emerged either in the Age of Exploration or even as late as the 19th century). In any event, the division of people into discrete groups, usually based on external anatomical features or assumed geographic origin, and theories about how many "races" there were, and theories of how to "rank" these races against each other, existed long before they acquired any sort of distinct stigma against them. During the late-19th century, a number of thinkers emphasized that these views were morally and ethically unjust, but this was a significantly minority opinion. Even those who opposed institutions such as slavery often did so not on the basis of equality of races, but on overall equality in treatment of "mankind".

In the 20th century, however, there began a growth of thought that theories of racial "superiority" and "inferiority" were inherently problematic and wrong. Much of the discourse relating to racial theory of this sort came out of the United States in the years after the American Civil War, while European thinkers began to think of people in terms of linguistic "nations" more than they did "races". The term "racism", according to the Oxford English Dictionary, emerged in the early 1930s as distinct from the "theories of race" which had existed for at least a hundred years before that.

A turning point in racial thinking came with the rise of Adolf Hitler's Nazism, which built much of its political agenda upon the rhetoric of anti-Semitism and overt statements of racial superiority and inferiority. Full opposition to these ideas did not begin until the outbreak of World War II, and a large part of Allied propaganda efforts were in labeling Nazi Germany as a "racist" state, and distinguishing their own states from them. By the end of the war, the association of racism with the Nazis, and the genocidal policies they undertook, thoroughly established the meme that "racism" was something to be opposed. In the United States, the experience of the Civil Rights Movement further emphasized this point. At the present time, "racism" is now seen as something entirely to be opposed by almost all mainstream voices, though there is little agreement over what is "racism" and what is not. It is worth remembering, when looking at examples of "racism" from the past, that our 20th-century notions of "racism" as a concept, and it being a bad thing, are a relatively recent experience. In hindsight, many eminent scientists, philosophers, and statesmen appear "racist" by late-20th century standards, though the recognition of the historical nature of these judgements does not necessarily make them inaccurate or necessarily exonerate these figures or governments for their ideas or actions.

Origins of racism

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 because of a history in the U.S. of police authority and force being used discriminatorily, and more frequently with unjustified, deadly force against African-Americans. In both sets of cases, theories of conditioning may apply.

A famous experiment in cognitive psychology showed that the majority of Americans would remember a lower-status "black" man as having a knife in his hand, after viewing a picture which, in fact, showed a "white" man in a suit with a knife facing this lower-status man.

Debates over the origins of racism often suffer from a lack of clarity over the term. Many use the term "racism" to refer to more general phenomena, such as xenophobia and ethnocentrism. Others conflate recent forms of racism with earlier forms of ethnic and national conflict. In most cases, ethno-national conflict seems to owe to conflict over land and strategic resources. In some cases ethnicity and nationalism were harnessed to rally combatants in wars between great religious empires (for example, the Muslim Turks and the Catholic Austro-Hungarians). As Benedict Anderson has suggested in Imagined Communities, ethnic identity and ethno-nationalism became a source of conflict within such empires with the rise of print-capitalism.

Notions of race and racism, however, often have played central roles in such conflicts. 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 gold or other 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 weapon of bioterror in order to reduce their population.

In the western world, racism evolved, twinned with the doctrine of white supremacy, and helped fuel the European exploration, conquest, and colonization of much of the rest of the world -- especially after Christopher Columbus reached the Americas. As new peoples were encountered, fought, and ultimately subdued, theories about "race" began to develop, and these helped many to justify the differences in position and treatment of people whom they categorized as belonging to different races (see Eric Wolf's Europe and the People Without History). Some people like Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda even argued that the Native Americans were natural slaves. In Asia, the Chinese and Japanese Empires were both strong colonial powers, with the Chinese making colonies and vassal states of much of mainland Asia, and the Japanese doing the same in the west Pacific. In both cases, the Asian imperial powers believed they were ethnically and racially superior to their vassals, and entitled to be their masters.

Expressions

Racism may be expressed individually and consciously, through explicit thoughts, feelings, or acts, or socially and unconsciously, through institutions that promote inequalities among "races". Although some speakers attempt to express a semantic distinction by using the word racism rather than racialism (or vice versa), many treat the terms as synonymous (see below).

Racism may be divided in three major subcategories: individual racism, structural racism, and ideological racism.

Examples of individual racism include an employer not hiring a person, failing to promote or giving harsher duties or imposing harsher working conditions, or firing, someone, in whole or in part due to his race.

Researchers at the University of Chicago (Marianne Bertrand) and Harvard University (Sendhil Mullainathan) found in a 2003 study that there was widespread discrimination in the workplace against job applicants whose names were merely perceived as "sounding black." These applicants were 50% less likely than candidates perceived as having "white-sounding names" to receive callbacks for interviews, no matter their level of previous experience. Results were stronger for higher quality resumes. The researchers view these results as strong evidence of unconscious biases rooted in the country's long history of discrimination. This is an example of structural racism, because it shows a widespread established belief system. Another example is apartheid in South Africa, and the system of Jim Crow laws in the United States of America. Another source is lending inequities of banks, and so-called redlining.

Racism is usually directed against a minority population, but may also be directed against a majority population. Examples of the former include the enslavement of black Africans and repression of their descendants in the United States. The existence of the latter is often controversial, but agreed upon examples include racial apartheid in South Africa, wherein whites (a minority) discriminated against blacks (a majority); this form of racism also occurred during the former colonial rule of such countries as Vietnam (by France) and India (by the United Kingdom).

"Reverse racism" is a controversial concept; it refers to a form of discrimination against a dominant group. In the United States, many people, mostly conservatives, criticize policies such as affirmative action as an example of reverse racism. They say that these policies are race-based discrimination. Supporters of affirmative action argue that affirmative action policies counteract a systemic and cultural racism by providing a balancing force, and that affirmative action does not qualify as racist because the policies are enacted by politicians (who are mostly part of the white majority in the United States) and directed towards their own race.

Some Americans believe that reverse racism exists in the United States, but that it is cultural racism, and not primarily systemic. For example, some African-Americans discriminate against white people -- this too can be called reverse racism. But some would argue that this is not racism (which they would see as primarily systemic) but actually personal prejudice because African-Americans lack the cultural, political and economic resources to systemically disenfranchise European Americans.

In addition, some white people believe that political correctness has led to a denigration of the white race, through perceived special attention paid to minority races. For example, they consider the existence of Black History Month (February) but not a White History Month, Amerindian History Month, or Asian History Month to be de facto racism directed at the majority and non-black minorities. Yet again, others argue that the lack of a White History Month is due to the fact that much of the school year is devoted to teaching history from the viewpoints of the majority culture.

Racial discrimination is and has been official government policy in many countries. In the 1970s, Uganda expelled tens of thousands of ethnic Indians. Until 2003, Malaysia enforced discriminatory policies limiting access to university education for ethnic Chinese and Indian students who are citizens by birth of Malaysia, and many other policies explicitly favoring bumiputras (Malays) remain in force. Russia launched anti-Semitic pogroms against Jews in 1905 and after. During the 1930s and 1940s, attempts were made to prevent Jews from immigrating to the Middle East. Following the creation of Israel, land-ownership in many Israeli towns was limited to Jews, and many Muslim countries expelled Jewish Arabs and continue to refuse entry to Jews.

In the United States, racial profiling of minorities by law enforcement officials is a controversial subject. Some people consider this to be a form of racism. Some claim that profiling young Arab male fliers at airports will only lead to increased recruitment of older, non-Arab, and female terrorists. (Some terrorism experts disagree with this claim.) Many critics of racial profiling claim that it is an unconstitutional practice because it amounts to questioning individuals on the basis of what crimes they might commit or could possibly commit, instead of what crimes they have actually committed. See the article on racial profiling for more information on this dispute.

History of racism in the modern world

In 19th century Europe and America, some scientists developed various theories about biological differences among races, and these theories were in turn used to legitimize racist beliefs and practices. Much of this work has since been rejected by the scientific community as flawed and even as pseudoscience.

Today there are some scientists who claim that "race", in the general sense in which the term is used, is a social construct: the way in which individuals are classified into racial groups varies from person to person, and from place to place, and from time to time. These scientists say that superficial characteristics which are associated with racial groupings are poor predictors of genetic variability. There can be more genetic variation within a racial grouping than between two racial groupings. They also point to the lack of well-defined boundaries to racial classifications; for example characteristics such as skin colour and facial appearance can be shown to vary as a continuum from place to place. Other scientists counter that "sex" and "species" are likewise seen by some as socially constructed. After all, humans and chimpanzees (or males and females) are far more genetically alike than different. According to this view, categories need not be absolute in order to have scientific utility.

Canada

While Canada often depicts its society as being a very progressive, tolerant, diverse, and multicultural nation, Canada also has its own history of racism. Although the historical records are not very clear at the very beginnings of the country's history, one can argue that the first event of racism in Canada occurred during the first trip of Jacques Cartier in 1534, when he brought back two Iroquois more or less against their will in France, which amused greatly the French royal court. Later, although still not very clearly recognised in the mainstream culture (where it is more seen as territorial wars), much racism occurred between the French and the First Nations people, between First Nations tribes themselves (fuelled by alliances of certain tribes with the French, and others with the English), also between the English and the First Nations, and between the English and the French. Although the country's history was influenced greatly by those wars, the relationships between all those ethnicities has changed a lot since the beginning of European settlement in Canada.

Moreover, there are notable records of slavery in Canada in the 1700s. More than half of all Canadian slaves were aboriginal. In 1793, Upper Canada governor John Graves Simcoe passed a bill making it illegal to bring a person into the colony for the purposes of enslavement, and slavery was fully outlawed in 1834.

In the middle to late 18th century, Canada was a destination for many escaped African American slaves on the Underground Railroad. Many of the former slaves settled in Western Ontario, in communities such as Windsor, Chatham and Buxton, and in Nova Scotia, notably in the town of Africville. Black settlers such as Mary Ann Shadd and Josiah Henson made notable contributions to Canadian history. However, although Black Canadians could not be enslaved, they did still often find that they encountered substantial racism.

Starting in 1858, Chinese "coolies" were brought to Canada to work in the mines and on the Canadian Pacific Railroad. However, they were denied by law the rights of citizenship, including the right to vote, and in the 1880s, "head taxes" were implemented to curtail immigration from China. In 1907, a riot in Vancouver targeted Chinese and Japanese-owned businesses. In 1923, the federal government passed the Chinese Immigration Act, commonly known as the Exclusion Act, prohibiting further Chinese immigration except under "special circumstances". The Exclusion Act was repealed in 1947, the same year in which Chinese Canadians were finally given the right to vote.

Restrictions still existed on immigration from Asia. In 1967, these restrictions were repealed and Asian immigrants were given the same rights as any other group. In 1999, Adrienne Clarkson, the child of Chinese immigrants who moved to Canada in 1942 under the "special circumstances" clause, became Governor General of Canada. Japanese Canadians were also subject to anti-Asian racism, particularly during World War II when many Canadians of Japanese heritage -- even those who were born in Canada -- were forcibly moved to internment camps. The government of Canada officially made restitution for the treatment of Japanese Canadians in 1988.

However, racism in Canada has not only been connected to immigration. French Canadians, including Acadians, Québécois and Franco-ontarians, and aboriginals have also been subject to discriminatory treatment in Canada. However, having French recognised as an official language was seen as a very good pace (among many other events) towards today's multiculturalism. Also, the proportion of "visible minorities" in cities such as Toronto or Vancouver is close to exceed that of European descent Canadians, which undeniably makes racism more and more difficult, in part because the "visible minorities" have communities instead of being strangers in homogeneous communities. However, the further one goes from urban centers, the more likely it is that such communities are encountered, where racism might be more likely to happen.

Notable racist organizations in Canadian history have included the Parti national social chrétien, led by Adrien Arcand, and the Heritage Front, led by Ernst Zündel. Other notable individuals in the history of Canadian racism include Doug Christie, Wolfgang Droege and Don Andrews.

However, in the recent history of Canada, as most societies that see globalisation as progress, the country chose to proclaim itself as a multicultural nation, and hopefully in the future "visible minorities" will have even more (or should it be said "a more even") representation in the government, mainstream media, culture, and in the social classes than it has today.

United States of America

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 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.

The central cause of concern to landowners was the unity of Bacon's populist movement. It raised the question to the landowners of how to divide the population politically in ways that would keep the poorer colonists divided enough to rule. To the Governor, the most threatening, and unexpected, aspect of Bacon's rebellion was its multi-racial aspect. So from that time on, the wealthy landowners determined that only Africans would be used as slaves - and white colonists were promised whatever benefits would have gone to Africans had they continued to be indentured servants. This change began the infamously long period of the American slave society, in which slaves were primarily used for agricultural labor, notably in the production of cotton and tobacco. Black slavery in the Northeast was less common, usually confined to involuntary domestic servitude. The social rift along color lines soon became engrained in every aspect of colonial American culture.

Slavery in the Confederate states of America officially ended with the Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued on January 1, 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln. Slavery ended in the whole country with the 13th Amendment which was declared ratified on December 18, 1865. Despite this, remnants of racism continued in the United States with the existence of Jim Crow laws, educational disparities and widespread criminal acts. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 signified a change in the social acceptance of racism in America.

Nazi Germany

• Nazism
• General Government an attempt to introduce racial segregation in Poland, which was occupied by Nazi Germany. There were several separated races (in order of privileges):
  • Reichdeutsche
  • Volksdeutsche
  • Ukrainians
  • Goralenvolk
  • Poles
  • Russian
  • Jews

South Africa

See Apartheid.

Australia

See White Australia Policy and Terra nullius.

United Kingdom

There were race riots across the United Kingdom in 1919: South Shields, Glasgow, London's East End, Liverpool, Cardiff, Barry, and Newport. There were further riots by immigrant and minority populations in East London during the 1930s, Notting Hill in the 1950s, and Brixton, Toxteth and Blackbird Leys, Oxford in the 1980s. More recently, there have been riots in Bradford and Oldham. These riots have followed cases of perceived racism - either the public displays of racist sentiment (including crimes against members of ethnic minorities which were subsequently ignored by the authorities), or, as in the Brixton and Toxteth riots, racial profiling and alleged harassment by the police force.

Racism in one form or another was widespread in Britain before the twentieth century, and during the 1900s particularly towards Jewish groups and immigrants from Eastern Europe. The English establishment even considered the Irish a separate and degenerate race until well into the 19th Century. Since World War I, public expressions of white supremacism have been limited to far-right political parties such as the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s and the British National Front in the 1970s, whilst most mainstream politicians have publicly condemned all forms of racism. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that racism remains widespread, and some politicians and public figures have been accused of excusing or pandering to racist attitudes in the media, particularly with regard to immigration. There have been growing concerns in recent years about institutional racism in public and private bodies, and the tacit support this gives to crimes resulting from racism, such as the murder of Stephen Lawrence, Gavin Hopely and Ross Parker.

The Race Relations Act 1965 outlawed public discrimination, and established the Race Relations Board. Further Acts in 1968 and 1976 outlawed discrimination in employment, housing and social services, and replaced the Race Relations Board with Commission for Racial Equality. The Human Rights Act 1999 made organizations in Britain, including public authorities, subject to the European Convention on Human Rights. The Race Relations Act 2000 extends existing legislation for the public sector to the police force, and requires public authorities to promote equality.

There have been tensions over immigration since at least the early 1900s. These were originally engendered by hostility towards Jews and immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe. Britain first began restricting immigration in 1905 and has also had very strong limits on immigration since the early 1960s. Legislation was particularly targeted at members of the British Commonwealth, who had previously been able to migrate to the UK under the British Nationality Act 1948. Virtually all legal immigration, except for those claiming refugee status, ended with the Immigration Act 1971; however, free movement for citizens of the European Union was later established by the Immigration Act 1988. Legislation in 1993, 1996 and 1999 gradually decreased the rights and benefits given to those claiming refugee statues ("asylum seekers"). A further government Act in 2002 gave Britain the most restrictive immigration laws of any country in the European Union.

Some commentators believe that a huge amount of racism has been undocumented within the UK, adducing the many British cities whose populations have a clear racial divide. While these commentators believe that race relations have improved immensely over the last thirty years, they still believe that racial segregation remains an important but largely unaddressed problem.

New Zealand

Although New Zealand did not have an official policy along the lines of the White Australia Policy, it did impose a poll tax on Chinese immigrants during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The poll tax was effectively lifted in the 1930s following the invasion of China by Japan, and was finally repealed in 1944.

After World War II, immigration policy remained largely Eurocentric until the mid-1980s, although war refugees and non-Anglo-Celtic migrants were allowed in the country in limited numbers. In the 1975 election campaign, opposition leader Robert Muldoon ran a scare campaign directed against Pacific Islands migrant workers, which was followed by a series of dawn raids on suspected overstayers. Land issues came to a head in the late 1970s with Maori protesters occupying the Raglan Golf Course and Bastion Point, with land claims on both being settled by the following decade.

In 1986, country-of-origin rules were abolished, leading to major inflows of immigration for the first time in years. However, anti-immigration rhetoric from Winston Peters has since forced immigration rules to be tightened.

Switzerland

A recent official research report of the Federal Commision against Racism (Bern, Switzerland) (http://www.edi.admin.ch/ekr/index.html) revealed both public and officials in Switzerland to exhibit a high degree of widespread racism. The international and national public had denied this so far and typically labelled few incidents as "exceptions" in order to downplay the issue. Racism based on skin colour in Switzerland, however, is by no means exceptional, and it affects immigrants even decades after their immigration. Racism based on skin colour today is a widely accepted norm in Switzerland, as incidents remain mostly without consequence. Immigrants have also labelled the Swiss way of integrating dark skinned foreigners as 'silent apartheid'. Apartheid is silent partly because Black people are typically discouraged to speak about such incidents. They are targeted by police and intimidated by authorities, which is one of the reasons leading to only a few incidents being reported. They experience frequent public humiliation and hate stares. Seats in public transport are typically left empty next to a Black person. Black people in Switzerland are also denied jobs on an openly declared basis of the color of their skin. Job promotion is a huge issue as Black people are mostly denied a higher position in their company, and if they manage to occupy a higher position, they are under harsh scrutiny. A Black person may well be jailed with a broken jaw and not receive the same medical attention as another prisoner. Neither the public nor officials, by and large, see Black people as a diverse group that features of a whole range of nationalities, cultures, languages, political attitudes and religion. The report concludes that it would be good to alert Black people to this issue about Switzerland, as up to the release of this report, many people assumed Switzerland to be free of racism.

Zimbabwe

Black Zimbabweans faced racism during white colonial rule (pre-1980). During the colonial era, inequalities existed. The greatest resource, land, was in the hands of the white minority. In order to economically empower the black majority, and restore the losses that indigenous Zimbabweans had suffered throughout history, land redistribution was the solution.

Some examples of specific types of alleged racism

• Afrocentrism - the belief that black African cultures were historically more powerful and influential than most historians believe, or that certain ancient civilizations were created or maintained by black Africans
• Anti-Semitism - usually, racism directed towards Jews, though Arabs are sometimes included as well.
• Apartheid - a now defunct, white supremacist system that once existed in South Africa, in which Whites, Blacks and "Coloreds" were segregated; some refer to current Israeli policies towards Palestinians as apartheid as well.
• Black supremacy - the belief that those of African descent are the superior race.
• Bumiputra - A system whereby Malays are accorded economic privileges not available to those of other races.
• Caste system - (not always considered racist) A system of social hierarchy among various social groups, such as in India often stratified along color lines, with the darkest individuals being members of the must subordinate caste - each assigned a specific occupation and social role.(see untouchable.)
• Colonialism - a practice of the imperial powers of Europe and Asia, wherein foreign territories were subjugated and minority ruling classes were installed to exploit the natural and human resources of the territory. Although not explicitly racist by intent, negative consequences due to racism nearly always resulted.
• Colorism - a bias against dark skin resulting from an internalization of white racist values, manifested in such things as the paper bag test. There seems to be an implicit calculus behind this belief that makes the worth of an individual inversely related to the darkness of his/her skin.
• Cultural genocide is a term used to describe the deliberate destruction of the cultural heritage of a people for political or military reasons.
• Ethnic Cleansing - the intentional and systematic relocation and/or elimination of different ethnicities to produce an ethnicly "pure" territory or country - for example, recent history in the former Yugoslavia
• Eurocentrism - the practice of historically and culturally focusing on white Europeans, to the exclusion of study, or even mention of, significant achievements of other groups of people; and often the appropriation of achievements of people of color as being European in origin
• Genocide - the intentional and systematic elimination of different races to produce an racially "pure" territory or country - for example, the history of the Third Reich
• Institutionalized Racism - the process of purposely discriminating against certain groups of people through the use of biased laws or practices. Often, institutionalized racism is subtle and manifests itself in seemingly innocuous ways, but its effects are anything but subtle. An example of this type of racism is the redlining of districts to keep certain people from moving in to a new neighborhood, pervasive in the financial industry in the 1950s and 60s.
• Interracial fetish - a sexual fetish involving stereotypes of cultural behaviors in a fetishistic manner. Coercion and dominance are recurring themes. Additionally, this is sometimes considered misogynistic as well as racist. Not surprisingly, there is no shortage of pornographic material that has been produced catering expressly to this attitude.
• Islamic fundamentalism and Islamist terrorism - Political reverse discriminatory prejudice and terrorism against non-Muslims, Muslims who do not adhere to their particular brand of Islam, and non-Islamic governments.
• Islamophobia - the manifestation of hatred and hostility towards Muslims and sometimes Arab people in general.
• Manifest Destiny - a historical form of the belief that asserted that white Americans had the right and duty to colonize the West and "civilize" the Native American inhabitants.
• Model Minority - stereotype that Asian Americans are intelligent and hardworking and should serve as a "model" for other minorities in the United States
• Nazism (National Socialism) - a historical form of political organization coupled with extreme racism, that directed its energies against the Jews, Roma (the so-called Gypsies), Poles, Russians and other Slavs, among other groups. Some adherents of Nazi ideology continue to exist today.
• Racial purity - the belief that the various so-called races should be kept "pure" by not permitting interbreeding
• Racial segregation - the discriminatory practice of separating groups in society along racial lines, often associated with privilege, power and entitlement for a dominant group and disdvantage and oppression for the subordinate one.
• Redlining - the practice of denying marginalized communities services (such as food delivery or taxi service), or access to home or business loans allowing residents to build equity and have a financial stake in their own communities, or refusal to locate businesses or other services in marginalized communities (such as supermarkets, banks, or bus and subway routes).
• Reverse discrimination or reverse racism - the belief that measures designed to correct alleged racism, such as Affirmative action, have in fact simply created new racist policies against the dominant groups. This is a highly controversial idea.
• White flight - the practice of white residents abandoning a neighborhood or area due to the arrival of black or other residents, often weakening the tax base and reducing public services. The practice is also known as the tipping point.
• White man's burden - the belief once held by Europeans that they were obligated to civilize and "correct" the great unwashed heathen masses of the world. Although considered a noble mission by some, in practice its consequences nearly always resulted in more human suffering. Term coined by Rudyard Kipling. Similar to "colonialism."
• White privilege - preferential treatment enjoyed by white persons in various aspects of society.
• White supremacy - the belief that Caucasians are, as a race, superior or worthy of supremacy, even called by some the "master race".
• Attitudes of suburb and gated community developers, who are often accused of pandering to racist views by emphasizing "crime risk" in more racially diverse downtowns, especially in North America.
• Xenophobia
• Zionism was labeled racism by UN Resolution 3379, although the UN later rescinded this resolution. The Anti-Defamation League, most Jews, and most American Fundamentalist Christians deny that Zionism constitutes racism. [2] (http://www.adl.org/presrele/islme_62/3840_62.asp) See Zionism and racism for details.