capitalism

R
RACISM
Racism refers to the belief that certain groups, based on
their race, ethnicity, or color, possess characteristics that are
in some way inferior or superior to those of other groups
or otherwise entitle them to special burdens or benefits.
Racism is closely related to other concepts: bigotry, the
hatred or loathing of certain groups on the basis of racism;
prejudice or stereotyping, the assignment of qualities to
individual members of a group based on racial generalizations;
and discrimination, the differing treatment of groups
or individuals on the basis of race, ethnicity, or color.
Racism is antithetical to individualism, in which people
are judged on the basis of individual attributes without
regard to race, ethnicity, or color. The philosopher Ayn
Rand states,
Racism is the lowest most crudely primitive form of collectivism.
It is the notion of ascribing moral, social, or
political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the
notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits
are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.
Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged,
not by his own character and actions, but by the characters
and actions of his ancestors.
Racism has manifested itself in myriad ways, such as
Hitler’s plan to exterminate Jews and glorify the “Aryan
race” in Nazi Germany, tribal genocide in Africa, oppression
of the Indians in the Americas, the “ethnic cleansing”
campaign in Bosnia, Jim Crow laws in the United States,
and the massacres of Chinese and Korean people by the
Japanese Empire, to name only a few from a depressingly
long list of examples.
The United States was created on the principle of individual
sovereignty. The Declaration of Independence professes
the belief that “All men are created equal.” The Rev.
Martin Luther King, Jr. declared that what “ultimately distinguishes
...our form of government from all of the totalitarian
regimes that emerge in history” is that our system
“says that each individual has certain basic rights that are
neither conferred by nor derived from the state.” Because
of its official attachment to individualism and its multiracial
population, the struggle over racism took on special
prominence in American life.
Of course, the same young nation that embraced individualism
also gave official sanction to human slavery.
Although slavery has existed for millennia and was not
originally tied to race, over time, racism came to be
employed as the most prominent rationale for slavery. After
abolition of slavery in the United States, racism was used to
justify the “separate but equal” laws that followed it. Racist
ideology persists today and is a motivating factor in ethnic
conflicts around the globe, from Rwanda (Hutus and
Tutsis) to Malaysia (Malays and Chinese) to Guatemala
(Indians and Ladinos) and elsewhere. Race has often
proved itself a useful and convenient foundation for conflict
by providing criteria for deciding who is on which side
of a struggle for power or resources.
For many years, racism was explicitly sustained in
American law. In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in
Dred Scott v. Sanford that emancipated blacks could not sue
in the courts because they were not members of the political
community. Chief Justice Roger Taney concluded that
at the time of the American founding, blacks were
considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who
had been subjugated by the dominant race, and whether
emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority,
and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held
the power and government might choose to give them.
Antislavery advocates rejected those premises. Senator
Charles Sumner declared about the Negro: “he is a MAN—
the equal of all his fellow men.” Former slave Frederick
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