Definitions of Race and Racism

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Definitions of Race and Racism

• The Center for the Study of White American
  Culture
• http//euroamerican.org/images/logot.gif

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Definitions of Race

• Race n MF, generation, fr. OIt razza (1580)
• 1 a breeding stock of animals
• 2 a a family, tribe, people, or nation belonging
  to the same stock b a class or kind of people
  unified by community of interests, habits, or
  characteristics
• 3 a an actually or potentially interbreeding
  group within a species also a taxonomic
  category (as a subspecies) representing such a
  group b BREED c a division of mankind
  possessing traits that are transmissible by
  descent and sufficient to characterize it as a
  distinct human type
• 4 obs inherited temperament or disposition 5
  distinctive flavor, taste, or strength
• Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary

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Definitions of Race

• Race, technically, refers to differential
  concentrations of gene frequencies responsible
  for traits which, so far as we know, are confined
  to physical manifestations such as skin color or
  hair form it has no intrinsic connection with
  cultural patterns and institutions.
• Milton M. Gordon
• Assimilation in American Life

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Definitions of Race

• Race is a group that is socially defined but on
  the basis of physical criteria.
• Pierre L. van den Berghe
• Race and Racism A Comparative Perspective

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Definitions of Race

• Race - A specious classification of human beings
  created by Europeans (whites) which assigns human
  worth and social status using "white" as the
  model of humanity and the height of human
  achievement for the purpose of establishing and
  maintaining privilege and power.
• Ronald Chisom and Michael Washington
• Undoing Racism A Philosophy of International
  Social Change

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Definitions of Race

• Race is a word used in English to refer to
  groups of people until the 1600s, and the meaning
  was broadly applied. The meaning of race slowly
  narrowed until in the late 1700s it took on its
  present meaning to indicate groups of people
  sharing common physical characteristics,
  especially skill color.
• The narrowing of meaning took place at the same
  time as Europeans were beginning to colorize and
  dominate Africa, Asia, and the Americansareas
  whose native inhabitants differed in skin color
  from Europeans.
• Over time, racial categories based on skin color
  became a means of differentiating superior
  Europeans from inferior others.
• Audrey Smedley, Anthropologist (1999)
• Race in North America

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Definitions of Race

• Race - Identifying markers rationalizing a
  subdivision of a species. Some Anthropologists
  classify races in these five categories
• African/Black,
• Oceanic/Brown,
• American/Red,
• Asiatic/Yellow,
• European/White.
• Other anthropologists use these terms
• Ethiopian/Black,
• Malayan/Brown,
• American/Red,
• Mongolian/Yellow
• Caucasian/White.
• Phavia Kujichagulia

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Definitions of Race

• Webster's dictionary defines race as any of the
  three divisions of mankind distinguished by skin
  color or a class of individuals from a common
  stock. Although an argument could be made for
  four or five divisions of mankind, Webster only
  recognizes three.
• Others claim there are as many as 36 races.
• Others claim there is only one race - the human
  race. The concept of race was established by
  Eurocentric cultures/peoples so that they could
  dehumanize, disenfranchise and/or destroy
  non-White peoples.
• Phavia Kujichagulia
• Recognizing and Resolving Racism A Resource and
  Guide for Humane Beings

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• Race - A category of the human species sharing
  more or less distinctive physical traits
  transmitted in descent a concept that has little
  scientific validity but continues to have a
  meaning in particular social contexts.
• Enid Lee, Deborah Menkart and Margo Okazawa-Rey
  (eds.)
• Beyond Heroes and Holidays A Practical Guide to
  K-12 Anti-Racist, Multicultural Education and
  Staff Development

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Race

• is NOT based on biology CREATED category with
  historical roots used to classify groups of
  people.
• historically was not determined by skin color
  but by class inequalities (e.I., the English
  defined the Irish as a "lower" race.)
• during colonial expansion by European nations,
  race was defined in terms of skin color where
  non-white people were considered "lower" races.
• Anti-Racism Media Education (ARMEd)http//opirg.sa
  .utoronto.ca/armed/resources/definitions.html,
  December 20, 2002

• Today, relationships between differently raced
  people are still determined by this moment in
  history and remain unequal, where white people
  have the most power and privilege and are
  considered the norm (ie. non-raced.)
• is important to understand that white is also a
  created racial category.
• is also important to understand that though
  racial categories derived from oppressive
  contexts, they can also be reclaimed and used as
  forms of resistance by communities of color.

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Definitions of Racism

• racism n (1936)
• 1 a belief that race is the primary determinant
  of human traits and capacities and that racial
  differences produce an inherent superiority of a
  particular race
• 2 racial prejudice or discrimination
• Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary

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Definitions of Racism

• Racism is race prejudice power
• Origin unknown (ca. 1970)
• Used by several groups doing antiracism education
  and training

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Definitions of Racism

• On finding that many white Americans were not
  "prejudiced," and did not harbor hostility or
  faulty generalizations about other racial groups,
  but nonetheless resisted change in the nation's
  racial structure, one sociologist finds
• that racism extends considerably beyond
  prejudiced beliefs. The essential feature of
  racism is not hostility or misperception, but
  rather the defense of a system from which
  advantage is derived on the basis of race. The
  manner in which the defense is articulated -
  either with hostility or subtlety - is not nearly
  as important as the fact that it insures the
  continuation of a privileged relationship. Thus
  it is necessary to broaden the definition of
  racism beyond prejudice to include sentiments
  that in their consequence, if not in their
  intent, support the racial status
• Quo David T. Wellman Portraits of White Racism,
  Second Edition

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Definitions of Racism

• Racism is a global system of material and
  symbolic resource distribution management more
  comprehensively defined, in accordance with each
  of the following principles

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Definitions of Racism

• Principle I.
• Racism is an ideological, structural and
  historic stratification process by which the
  population of European descent, through its
  individual and institutional distress patterns,
  intentionally has been able to sustain, to its
  own best advantage, the dynamic mechanics of
  upward or downward mobility (of fluid status
  assignment) to the general disadvantage of the
  population designated as non-white (on a global
  scale), using skin color, gender, class,
  ethnicity or nonwestern nationality as the main
  indexical criteria used for enforcing
  differential resource allocation decisions that
  contribute to decisive changes in relative racial
  standing in ways most favoring the populations
  designated as 'white.'

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Definitions of Racism

• Principle II.
• The aim of this peculiar post-1492 stratification
  process has been to aggregate an upwardly mobile
  and putatively 'white' racial group that is
  stratified internally and that strives to
  validate its own ascendancy using a shifting
  range of 'white' cultural practices which are
  defined as 'white' not on any presumed biological
  basis, but on the basis of "ideological
  whiteness"--a field of racial discourse and
  representation.

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Definitions of Racism

• Principle III.
• The conceptual content of this historic and
  politically-charged discursive field is sustained
  by racial agents who in many ways articulate and
  justify the suppression of "ideological
  blackness" (and every form of non-whiteness this
  may entail) which may be accomplished by many
  formal and informal means of institutional
  domination, routinized interpersonal
  interactions, cultural imperialism, or by any
  other racialized means of information control.

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Definitions of Racism

• Principle IV.
• As a generative principle of racism, "ideological
  whiteness" refers to a dual behavioral process
  entailing enactments of identify formation and
  resource access legitimation, both of which were
  practices once overtly recognized as aspects of
  "white supremacy," but which now may be more
  subtly and covertly reproduced as an observable
  and routine set of implicitly prescriptive, but
  explicitly disavowed white supremacist beliefs
  and practices to which all who identify as
  'white' (or who behave as 'whitened') are
  expected to adhere--especially white males--if
  they wish to maintain their own racial standing
  as members of these two privileged 'white' groups
  and assert their negotiable right to privileged
  resource access.

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Definitions of Racism

• Principle V.
• Collectively, the 'white' and/or 'whitened'
  members of this racially privileged global
  population tend to bolster their shared political
  intent to impose patterns of restricted resource
  access on racially subordinant populations, and
  aim to preserve their presumably non-negotiable
  right to prescribe, and even dictate, lessor
  resource access rights for certain upwardly
  mobile members of the 'non-white' population
  whose internalized racism, reliable complicity,
  and carefully scrutinized willingness to
  cooperate with racial dominates is always
  required and rewarded.
• Dr. Helan Enoch Page Associate Professor,
  Anthropology Department University of
  Massachusetts-AmherstDistributed at the American
  Anthropological Association, 1993 Updated and
  extended, 1999

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Definitions of Racism

• A situation in which one race maintains supremacy
  over another race through a set of attitudes,
  behaviors, social structures and ideologies. It
  involves four essential and interconnected
  elements
• Power the capacity to make and enforce decisions
  is disproportionately or unfairly distributed
• Resources unequal access to such resources as
  money, education, information, etc.
• Standards standards for appropriate behavior are
  ethnocentric, reflecting and privileging the
  norms and values of the dominant race/society
• Problem involves defining "reality" by naming
  "the problem" incorrectly, and thus misplacing
  it.
• Women's Theological Center, Boston, MA, 1994

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Definitions of Racism

• Racism - Racism involves physical, psychological,
  spiritual, and social control, exploitation and
  subjection of one race by another race. It is the
  social institutionalization of the psychological
  concept of White/white supremacy (a man-made
  ideology of white/White superiority and
  black/Black inferiority). This means that racial
  discrimination and injustice are established,
  perpetuated and promoted throughout every
  institution of society - economics, education,
  entertainment, family, labor, law, politics,
  religion, science and war. Racism is also used as
  an abuse excuse to rationalize violent behavior
  and inhumane policies toward Melanites.
• Melanite/Melanites - Alternative term for the
  words "people of color," "minorities," and
  "non-whites."Phavia KujichaguliaRecognizing and
  Resolving Racism A Resource and Guide for Humane
  Beings

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Definitions of Racism

• Racism an underlying belief in the superiority
  of one race over another and its right to
  dominate.
• generalizing one group of people by believing in
  simplistic stereotypes of that group.
• affects every aspect of the lives of communities
  of color social, economic, political, health,
  etc.
• may take three main forms (though all work
  together to maintain a system of oppression)
• Individual Racism-individual acts that overtly
  reflect racist attitudes/beliefs. This is the
  easiest one to identify. ie. racial slurs, jokes,
  etc.
• Systemic Racism and Institutional
  Racism-organizational policies and practices at
  the structural level that indirectly target
  communities of color and maintain white
  privilege. Ie. racism in the criminal justice
  system (police profiling) racism in the
  educational system (all white authors on a course
  reading list.)
• Cultural Racism-value system that supports and
  allows discriminatory actions against racially
  and ethnoculturally marginalized communities. Ie.
  white privilege.
• Anti-Racism Media Education (ARMEd)http//opirg.sa
  .utoronto.ca/armed/resources/definitions.html,
  December 20, 2002

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Definitions of Racism

• Racism - Racial prejudice and discrimination that
  are supported by institutional power and
  authority. The critical element that
  differentiates racism from prejudice and
  discrimination is the use of institutional power
  and authority to support prejudices and enforce
  discriminatory behaviors in systematic ways with
  far-reaching outcomes and effects. In the United
  States, racism is based on the ideology of White
  (European) supremacy and is used to the advantage
  of White people and the disadvantage of people of
  color
• Enid Lee, Deborah Menkart and Margo Okazawa-Rey
  (eds.)Beyond Heroes and Holidays A Practical
  Guide to K-12 Anti-Racist, Multicultural
  Education and Staff Development 

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Quotes

• I think it affects me and I hate the fact it
  affects me, that I am aware. If I meet an
  Italian, an Irish person, or a German, I'm not
  aware. When I meet a person of color I'm
  immediately aware. That's...I mean I don't have a
  negative reaction, but I'm immediately aware. I
  don't like it. It bothers me. Go!

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Quotes

• A white woman says, it angers me when I hear
  people call black people 'niggers' or anything
  else derogatory....it makes me angry. Go!

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Quotes

• I've had a friend of mine who is black say to
  me, 'You know when you're not with me, if I go
  into a store, there's someone watching me
  thinking that I'm going to shoplift.' And I can't
  believe it. Not only does it bother me, it's
  really unbelievable to me. Go!