Racism - A Short History - George M Fredrickson.pdf - WNLibrary

APPENDIX Racism in Historical Discourse
probe the psychology of “race prejudice” and attempted to
establish a functional equivalency between religious bigotry
and animosities ostensibly based on physical type or
ancestry. She viewed them both as leading to forms of “persecution”
that differed only in how they were rationalized,
and not in their essential nature. “Racism remains, in the
eyes of history,” she maintained, “. . . merely another instance
of the persecution of minorities for the advantage of
those in power.” From this perspective, “the Third Reich is
but following a long series of precedents in European anti-
Semitism.” 26 She attributed American prejudice against
blacks to “the persistence of slave-owner attitudes.” But she
exposed the limits of racial liberalism in the United States in
1940 when she called for a better deal for African Americans
while conspicuously failing to advocate full and immediate
equality: “Granted that great numbers of Negroes are not
ready for full citizenship, the social conditions which perpetuate
their poverty and ignorance must be remedied before
anyone can judge what kind of citizens they might be
in other, more favorable circumstances.” 27
The war and the Holocaust inspired a vast outpouring
of literature on the history of antisemitism, much of it
stressing its religious roots and eschewing comparisons with
racism targeted at other groups. Disagreements developed
on the question of whether the Nazi urge to eliminate Jews
on the basis of “race hygiene” was a continuation of earlier
antisemitic attitudes based, ostensibly at least, on religion,
or whether it was a radical new departure, a sine qua non
for the Holocaust. 28 Those who endorsed the latter view
sometimes employed a definition of racism that would
make the term apply only to “eliminationist antisemitism.”
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