BajaNomad

Corrupt Government Officials

k-rico - 6-23-2009 at 06:40 AM

They're everywhere.

Crimes at the Border

RD55 - 6-23-2009 at 10:23 AM

Interesting news clip. The Crimes at the Border film clip by Lowell Bergman is 30 minutes long. For those who don't want to watch the whole thing, here's some highlights.

47:30 Interview with a smuggler.

Narrator: After migrants are repatriated, (the smuggler) told us that as soon as people go through the gate, smugglers are waiting to pick them up for another try because part of the new way of doing business is: migrants don't have to pay until they are safely delivered into the United States.

Smuggler: You can always try again. You can keep trying. Because there's no problem keeping keep trying. But usually people that wanna go across the states, they will get across the states.

Narrator: But he said there's one guaranteed way to get across on your first try: A corrupt U.S. Border Official willing to take a bribe.

Smuggler: I know. I have known inspectors that are crooked. Other people have worked with them. But you would never talk about them and you will never say you have one because it's uh it's your golden um ticket, your meal ticket because those are like very very hard to catch. They will make a lot of money because it's... it's like fail safe. It's secure.

39:30 More of the interview with the smuggler.

Narrator: Is the smuggling business organized?

Smuggler: It's not a monopoly. It's a lot of people, a lot of families.

Narrator: Even small operations pay off the drug cartels for protection and for permission to operate.

Smuggler: The small ones will talk to the organized crime in Tijuana and be like "Ok so we are polleros. How much are you going to charge us a month to leave us alone and that the cops to leave us alone?" And the price varies from how big the organization is. There's people that pays up to 25,000 dollars a month.

31:40 Interview with Wayne Cornelius, a professor at UCSD who is an expert on immigration.

Wayne Cornelius: Our research shows that fewer than half of those who come to this border are apprehended. And of those who are caught, all but about 3% eventually get through.

Narrator: So you're saying that 97% of the people who try to get across this border here, get across eventually.

Wayne Cornelius: If they don't succeed on the first try, they almost certainly will succeed on the second or the third try.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

You have to watch most of the 30 minutes to see how the FBI busted the CBP Official at the Port of Entry.

DENNIS - 6-23-2009 at 10:42 AM

Thanks for both. It's a sick world....isn't it.

rpleger - 6-23-2009 at 10:57 AM

Very interesting, very...

Bajajorge - 6-23-2009 at 12:56 PM

I just can't believe that there is corruption in Mexico.:o:P:fire::biggrin::rolleyes:

Santiago - 6-23-2009 at 01:11 PM

Back in the 1980's I was close to a group of guys working in the local Border Patrol office. By 1990 2 of the men in their office were serving time for helping smugglers and 1 was convicted of smuggling jeans from China. (Jeans: please refrain from making some dopey comment, OK?)
They also said that the going rate for a northbound semi to cross the border unmolested was $10,000 'merican. Have no idea if this was or is true - but this tidbit slipped out after a couple of cases of beer. FWIW

Cypress - 6-23-2009 at 01:33 PM

A couple cases of beer?:spingrin:The US senators will only settle for regional dealership/franchise operational control.:no:

k-rico - 6-23-2009 at 06:10 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by rpleger
Very interesting, very...


It is interesting because if you extrapolate what is being observed to the day when the entire wall is built you get to the situation where all illegal aliens are going through the official points of entry.

That means more cars going north will need to be searched. The more cars being searched the closer the border becomes to being shut down because of the increased time required to get across.


[Edited on 6-24-2009 by k-rico]

toneart - 6-23-2009 at 07:45 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by k-rico
Quote:
Originally posted by rpleger
Very interesting, very...


It is interesting because if you extrapolate what is being observed to the day when the entire wall is built you get to the situation where all illegal aliens are going through the official points of entry.

That means more cars going north will need to be searched. The more cars being searched the closer the border becomes to being shut down because of the increased time required to get across.


[Edited on 6-24-2009 by k-rico]


...not to mention, the cost of building the wall...:(

slimshady - 6-23-2009 at 08:36 PM

Corruption in countries like Mexico can be found from the top to the bottom. Here in the U.S. corruption is found at the top. Its called campaign contributions, kickbacks, and donations.

Bajajack - 6-23-2009 at 09:02 PM

Mexicans and Gypsies have a lot in common, they're both taught by their parents and relatives as soon as they learn to talk how scam and use the system.

Just the way it is.

:cool:

Terry28 - 6-23-2009 at 09:15 PM

That sounds a little racist to me...

And how was the wall of China penetrated by the mongols?

estebanis - 6-23-2009 at 09:17 PM

Bribery to a Gate Guard...

Doug/Vamonos - 6-23-2009 at 10:01 PM

My wife works with a woman who is always dressed nicely. Nice jewelry, nice car. She's hispanic (US citizen). She gets her extra money driving to TJ and coming back with illegal children she passes off as her own. $5,000 a pop. She says she's been doing it for years and knows lots of people who do the same.

arrowhead - 6-24-2009 at 10:54 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Terry28
That sounds a little racist to me...


Hmmmm. I never knew that Mexicans were a race. I always thought they were a nationality, like Poles, Swedes, Italians, etc.

Just curious, what race are Mexicans? I know about 30% are pure native indians. What are the other 70%?

Bajahowodd - 6-24-2009 at 11:06 AM

That's a curious point. There are only three officially recognized races. Caucasian, Negroid and Mongoloid. It is within the Mongoloid race that the native Americans fall. There has been a creeping tendency to consider Mexicans non-White. Yet, there are obviously many Mexican of pure European ancestry. But, for the most part, the Mexican who emmigrated to the US tended to be the poor Mestizos whose blood lines blended with the native blood. What I clearly remember from school many decades ago was being taught that Mexicans were Caucasian.

Bajajack - 6-24-2009 at 11:47 AM

Educated mexicans in mexico are much more racist than most Americans. No white skinned mex of Spanish extraction associates with the lower class browns or the indios except the me Boss-you Peasant scenario.

Cypress - 6-24-2009 at 11:55 AM

Vaious groups in the USA have turned the racism issue into a cash cow. :lol: If your dumb enough to buy into it then open up your wallet.:biggrin:

Racism:

toneart - 6-24-2009 at 12:57 PM

This string was about corrupt U.S. border guards. How did it get corrupted into a racist commentary on Mexicans? When racists vent, it is because that is what they are, and that is what they do at any opportunity.

The discussion of "what race are Mexicans" is interesting, but doesn't define why Mexicans are discriminated against. Racism is a discriminatory attitude with disdain towards people who are of a different color or culture than themselves. It presumes a superior self-image, and those who are being discriminated against are considered inferior. The U.S.A. is not unique to Racism, but it certainly is pervasive here. Much of it is intended and overt. However, some people are so lacking in consciousness that they don't even know they are Racist.:rolleyes:

Skeet/Loreto - 6-24-2009 at 01:11 PM

I spent 38 years in Baja Calif. I started picking cotton at the age of 6 with the Mexicano families that came up each season to make money for their families.
I lived in the Central valley of Calif. for many years, I sold tools to many Mexicanos , I have worked in the Melons, the Wine Grapes, and on the Daires with many Mexicanos.

Let me tell some of you that they are every bit as Human as you people are putting them down.

Have any of you every been Hungry???
Have any of you wanted better things for you and your families???

I think it is High time some of you took a trip to Mexico and found out what the Mexican People are really like instead of beleiving the Internet Nuts that are full of BS.

Skeet/Loreto

Skeet!

toneart - 6-24-2009 at 01:19 PM

Thank you. Yours is a lucid statement backed up by experience.

Bajahowodd - 6-24-2009 at 03:02 PM

What Skeet says is clearly the truth. World-wide, racism exists. In the Western world, it tends to focus on pigmentation. The "whiter" you are, the better. It unfortunately has nothing to do with the spirit and heart of the person. Mexico and the US have much in common. But they also have many things that are different. I mentioned Mestizo in a prior post. Mexico has historically had class distinctions that were far greater than those we know in the US. Keeping that in mind, Can anyone show me where there has been a mass integration of European origined Americans with the native Americans? We put those people on reservations to segregate. At least in Mexico, aside from the very top of the economic strata, there has been integration. Who knows? Maybe the Mexican model will prevail. Besides, as a fair-skinned person who once actually had a head of blonde hair, I find myself very jealous of olive-skinned folks who can actually spend time in the sun.

fdt - 6-24-2009 at 03:58 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by toneart
This string was about corrupt U.S. border guards. How did it get corrupted into a racist commentary on Mexicans?


:light:

Bajahowodd - 6-24-2009 at 04:18 PM

It happens, Ferna.

Oso - 6-24-2009 at 04:44 PM

I'm not naming any names, but I know some people who crossed right through the gate at San Ysidro by renting real, not fake green cards. The "chiste" they told me was renting the card of someone of the same sex and roughly the same age and making sure to get in the line with a gabacho, not chicano, agent. Because, "We all look alike to them." The cards were collected and deposits returned at a pre-arranged spot a few blocks from the border.

k-rico - 6-24-2009 at 04:48 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by fdt
Quote:
Originally posted by toneart
This string was about corrupt U.S. border guards. How did it get corrupted into a racist commentary on Mexicans?


:light:


Yeah, I saw that. Maybe people didn't watch the video about the growing corruption problem within the ranks of US border agency personnel (they can make as much in one day taking bribes as they get paid in a year). From San Ysidro Blvd. to Wall Street to Capitol Hill, from the 1st year border guards to flying ace legislators, to Wall Street bankers, to corporate CEOs, every man, everywhere, has his price. It ain't just Mexicans.

And in addition, the video pointed out that with THE WALL human smuggling has moved to right under the border guard's noses, so their noses are getting stuffed with $100 bills, and lots of them. I wonder how many young folks are signing up with the border patrol right now planning on striking it rich, quick.

As a side note, I've heard on KPBS that the US is considering building southbound inspection booths. Let's see 20+ lanes going north and 6 going south? Traffic will be backed up to Seattle. So it won't happen. Right?

Skeet/Loreto - 6-25-2009 at 08:23 AM

To blame Corrupt Border patrol Officals for illegal Immigration is like a first grader blaming his teach for his F.

Yes there is Corruption, anywhere you have people with Authority it will occurr.

Now in Mexico it is out in the open where you expect it to happen. It is part of there life style.It is not part of our life style but is here amongest us.


Then someone will Hollar "Racism" Good Lord People, there will always be Racism. It can never be stopped or controlled to any extent. You cannot control peoples minds completely.
Wake up.

Does it make you feel better to Blame someone for something??
Learn to fight the good Fight for you beleifs.

Bajajorge - 6-25-2009 at 08:43 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by slimshady
Corruption in countries like Mexico can be found from the top to the bottom. Here in the U.S. corruption is found at the top. Its called campaign contributions, kickbacks, and donations.



In the US there is rampant corruption coming from the lower ranks and fraudulent use of the system. It's called Welfare and Social Security Disability. There are thousands upon thousands of slugs in the US fraudulently drawing from the systiem. The best one I ever heard was about the 500lb women:o who wanted the government to pay her way because she was so fat she couldn't get through the front door to go to work.:fire::mad::fire::mad:

arrowhead - 6-25-2009 at 11:08 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bajajorge
The best one I ever heard was about the 500lb women:o who wanted the government to pay her way because she was so fat she couldn't get through the front door to go to work.


Wouldn't it just be cheaper for the government to pay to widen her door?

toneart - 6-25-2009 at 11:36 AM

Skeet,

Unlike your earlier lucid post which chides racism against Mexicans, this one rambles and is its intent and its intended target(s) is not clear.

I don't think "blame" is the correct action that has offended you. Substitute the word "blame" for "identify" and you will see that the article identifies a problem; a few (I hope only a few) corrupt U.S. border officials. This is the central point of the article, but obviously, as you say, "Yes there is Corruption, anywhere you have people with Authority it will occurr."

In your earlier post you seemed to have disdain for those who have racist attitudes towards Mexicans because they haven't lived among them like you have. Now you say, "Then someone will Hollar "Racism" Good Lord People, there will always be Racism. It can never be stopped or controlled to any extent. You cannot control peoples minds completely. Wake up." To me this sounds contradictory.

While it is true, you can't control peoples minds completely, Racism has been legislated against in The United States when people are discriminated against in the workplace because of race, creed or religion,or in the case of hate crimes. We can rail against Racism. It is repugnant. You can't change societal attitudes overnight or even in a decade, but the hope is, we can erase this dehumanizing practice as the offending generations die off. We probably won't see it in our lifetimes.

Next you say,"Does it make you feel better to Blame someone for something??" I don't understand who you are questioning here, the writer of the article, the Nomad who posted it, or who?

"Learn to fight the good Fight for you beleifs." Isn't that what we are doing?

toneart - 6-25-2009 at 11:39 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by arrowhead
Quote:
Originally posted by Bajajorge
The best one I ever heard was about the 500lb women:o who wanted the government to pay her way because she was so fat she couldn't get through the front door to go to work.


Wouldn't it just be cheaper for the government to pay to widen her door?


Grease the door frames? Hey arrowhead! You and I can solve our government's insolvency. :yes:

Skeet/Loreto - 6-25-2009 at 12:49 PM

Your are correct toneart!

I meant to emply that however you approach Corruption, blaming someone else for the Problem,then trying to tie in Racism as one of the factors shows up the Accuser as being "unaware that there will always be Racism"???

Through my years I have found that I am happier around Mexicanos than I am Canadians.

The attacking of problems with BS words, blaming other folks, etc, is part of the Problem..Go out and take some action of some kind.

It seems that those Nuts who are always screaming "Racism" really do not understand, they are just copying what others are Shouting.

toneart - 6-25-2009 at 01:26 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Skeet/Loreto
Your are correct toneart!

I meant to emply that however you approach Corruption, blaming someone else for the Problem,then trying to tie in Racism as one of the factors shows up the Accuser as being "unaware that there will always be Racism"???

Through my years I have found that I am happier around Mexicanos than I am Canadians.

The attacking of problems with BS words, blaming other folks, etc, is part of the Problem..Go out and take some action of some kind.

It seems that those Nuts who are always screaming "Racism" really do not understand, they are just copying what others are Shouting.


If one were prone to placing blame, then who would you blame other than the accused; in this case, identifying some corrupt border officials. I think they need to be exposed. How is this part of the problem?

I don't recall anyone crying "Racist" and applying it to the alleged corrupt border officials. I am perhaps the "nut" that questioned how this string became a hijack with racist comments.:smug:

Bajajack - 6-25-2009 at 01:31 PM

The ones screaming Racism the loudest are usually the ones breaking US Law's the most.

:cool:

CaboRon - 6-26-2009 at 11:28 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Skeet/Loreto

Through my years I have found that I am happier around Mexicanos than I am Canadians.



The above is a blatently racist comment .....

Skeet/Loreto - 6-26-2009 at 01:08 PM

Cabo:

Where is it Racist?????
What makes it Racist??
Mexicans and Canadians are not a Race Cabo, Where did you go to School? or did you??

CaboRon - 6-26-2009 at 05:12 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Skeet/Loreto
Cabo:

Where is it Racist?????
What makes it Racist??
Mexicans and Canadians are not a Race Cabo, Where did you go to School? or did you??


San Diego State University and UC Berkeley

Racism is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.[1] In the case of institutional racism, certain racial groups may be denied rights or benefits, or get preferential treatment, while reverse racism favours members of a historically disadvantaged group at the expense of those of a historically advantaged group. Racial discrimination typically points out taxonomic differences between different groups of people, even though anybody can be racialised, independently of their somatic differences. According to the United Nations conventions, there is no distinction between the term racial discrimination and ethnic discrimination.

Contents [hide]
1 Definitions
1.1 Legal
1.2 Sociological
2 Types
2.1 Racial discrimination
2.2 Institutional
2.3 Economic
2.4 Declarations against racial discrimination
3 Ideology
3.1 Ethnic nationalism
4 Ethnic conflicts
5 Academic variants
5.1 Scientific variants
5.1.1 Heredity and eugenics
5.1.2 Polygenism and racial typologies
5.1.3 Human Zoos
6 Evolutionary theories about the origins of racism
7 As state-sponsored activity
8 In history
8.1 In Antiquity
8.2 In the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance
8.3 As part of colonialism in the 19th century
8.4 In the Age of Enlightenment
8.5 20th century
9 Inter-minority variants
10 See also
11 Further reading
12 References & notes
13 External links



[edit] Definitions
Although the term 'racism' usually denotes race-based prejudice, violence, discrimination, or oppression, the term can also have varying and hotly contested definitions. Racialism is a related term, sometimes intended to avoid these negative meanings. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, racism is a belief or ideology that all members of each racial group possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially to distinguish it as being either superior or inferior to another racial group or racial groups. The Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines racism as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular racial group, and that it is also the prejudice based on such a belief. The Macquarie Dictionary defines racism as: "the belief that human races have distinctive characteristics which determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule or dominate others."

The concept that discrimination can be based on "race" presupposes the existence of "race" itself. However, the US Government's Human Genome Project has announced that the most complete mapping of human DNA to date indicates that there is no distinct genetic basis to racial types.[2] Therefore, "racial characteristics" logically cannot and do not exist either.[citation needed]

According to the Human Genome Project, skin color does exist as a matter of science.[2] So, that which is commonly referred to as "racism" could be more scientifically referred to as "skin color-aroused discrimination". The term "skin color aroused discrimination" has the benefit that it is based on verifiable science, is not based on disproved notions of science, and does not perpetuate a false belief in the disproved concept of biological "race".[2]


[edit] Legal
The UN does not define "racism", however it does define "racial discrimination": according to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,

the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life. '[3]

This definition does not make any difference between prosecutions based on ethnicity and race, in part because the distinction between the two remains debatable among anthropologists.[4] According to British law, racial group means "any group of people who are defined by reference to their race, colour, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origin".[5]


[edit] Sociological
Some sociologists have defined racism as a system of group privilege. In Portraits of White Racism, David Wellman has defined racism as "culturally sanctioned beliefs, which, regardless of intentions involved, defend the advantages whites have because of the subordinated position of racial minorities”.[6] Sociologists Noël A. Cazenave and Darlene Alvarez Maddern define racism as “...a highly organized system of 'race'-based group privilege that operates at every level of society and is held together by a sophisticated ideology of color/'race' supremacy. Racist systems include, but cannot be reduced to, racial bigotry,”.[7] Sociologist and former American Sociological Association president Joe Feagin argues that the United States can be characterized as a "total racist society" because racism is used to organize every social institution”.[8]

More recently, Feagin has articulated a comprehensive theory of racial oppression in the U.S. in his book Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression (Routledge, 2006). Feagin examines how major institutions have been built upon racial oppression which was not an accident of history, but was created intentionally by white Americans. In Feagin's view, white Americans labored hard to create a system of racial oppression in the 17th century and have worked diligently to maintain the system ever since. While Feagin acknowledges that changes have occurred in this racist system over the centuries, he contends that key and fundamental elements have been reproduced over nearly four centuries, and that U.S. institutions today reflect the racialized hierarchy created in the 17th century. Today, as in the past, racial oppression is not just a surface-level feature of this society, but rather pervades, permeates, and interconnects all major social groups, networks, and institutions across the society. Feagin's definition stands in sharp contrast to psychological definitions that assume racism is an "attitude" or an irrational form of bigotry that exists apart from the organization of social structure.

Barbara Trepagnier’s research shows that virtually all whites hold some negative stereotypes and assumptions about African Americans and other racial–ethnic minorities, what she calls silent racism. In her book, Silent Racism: How Well-Meaning White People Perpetuate the Racial Divide (2006), Trepagnier demonstrates how the negative stereotypes and assumptions of whites reproduce institutional racism, also known as systemic racism. She argues that the oppositional categories commonly used to think about racism—Racist and Not Racist—hide silent racism and other insidious forms such as color-blind racism. Replacing the outdated categories with a continuum labeled More Racist and Less Racist would expose these subtle forms of racism that are more closely linked to racial injustice than outright bigotry is.

Color-blind racism as developed by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva in Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality (2003) refers to the claim by some whites that racism is no longer an issue since passage of the 1960s civil rights legislation. According to Bonilla-Silva, color-blind racism is an attempt to maintain white privilege without appearing racist.


[edit] Types

[edit] Racial discrimination

An anti-discrimination poster in a Hong Kong subway station, January 2005Racial discrimination is treating people differently through a process of social division into categories not necessarily related to races. Racial segregation policies may officialize it, but it is also often exerted without being legalized. Researchers, including Dean Karlan and Marianne Bertrand, at the MIT and the University of Chicago 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. In contrast, institutions and courts have upheld discrimination against whites when it is done to promote a diverse work or educational environment, even when it was shown to be to the detriment of qualified applicants [9] [10]. The researchers view these results as strong evidence of unconscious biases rooted in the United States' long history of discrimination (i.e. Jim Crow laws, etc.)[11]


[edit] Institutional
Further information: Institutional racism, State racism, Affirmative action, Racial profiling, and Racism by country
Institutional racism (also known as structural racism, state racism or systemic racism) is racial discrimination by governments, corporations, educational institutions or other large organizations with the power to influence the lives of many individuals. Stokely Carmichael is credited for coining the phrase institutional racism in the late 1960s. He defined the term as "the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin".[12]

Maulana Karenga argued that racism constituted the destruction of culture, language, religion and human possibility, and that the effects of racism were "the morally monstrous destruction of human possibility involved redefining African humanity to the world, poisoning past, present and future relations with others who only know us through this stereotyping and thus damaging the truly human relations among peoples."[13]

[edit] Economic
This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (January 2009)

Historical economic or social disparity is alleged to be a form of discrimination which is caused by past racism and historical reasons, affecting the present generation through deficits in the formal education and kinds of preparation in the parents' generation, and, through primarily unconscious racist attitudes and actions on members of the general population. (e.g. A member of race Y, Mary, has her opportunities adversely affected (directly and/or indirectly) by the mistreatment of her ancestors of race Y.) The common hypothesis embraced by classical economists is that competition in a capitalist economy decreases the impact of discrimination. The thinking behind the hypothesis is that discrimination imposes a cost on the employer, and thus a profit-driven employer will avoid racist hiring policies.


[edit] Declarations against racial discrimination
Racial discrimination contradicts the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence, the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen issued during the French Revolution and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed after World War II, which all postulate equality between all human beings.

In 1950, UNESCO suggested in The Race Question —a statement signed by 21 scholars such as Ashley Montagu, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Gunnar Myrdal, Julian Huxley, etc. — to "drop the term race altogether and instead speak of ethnic groups". The statement condemned scientific racism theories which had played a role in the Holocaust. It aimed both at debunking scientific racist theories, by popularizing modern knowledge concerning "the race question," and morally condemned racism as contrary to the philosophy of the Enlightenment and its assumption of equal rights for all. Along with Myrdal's An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944), The Race Question influenced the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court desegregation decision in "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka".[14]

The United Nations uses the definition of racial discrimination laid out in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, adopted in 1966:

...any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.(Part 1 of Article 1 of the U.N. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination)[15]

In 2001, the European Union explicitly banned racism along with many other forms of social discrimination in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, the legal effect of which, if any, would necessarily be limited to Institutions of the European Union: "Article 21 of the charter prohibits discrimination on any ground such as race, color, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, disability, age or sexual orientation and also discrimination on the grounds of nationality."[16]


[edit] Ideology

A racist political campaign poster from the 1866 Pennsylvania gubernatorial election
A sign on a racially segregated beach in South Africa during apartheidAs an ideology, racism existed during the 19th century as "scientific racism", which attempted to provide a racial classification of humanity.[17] Although such racist ideologies have been widely discredited after World War II and the Holocaust, the phenomena of racism and of racial discrimination have remained widespread all over the world. Some examples of this in present day are statistics including, but not limited to, the ratio of black men in prison to free black men vs. other races, physical abilities and mental ability statistics, and other data gathered by scientific groups. While these statistics are accurate, and can show trends, it's inappropriate in most countries to assume that because a particular race has a high crime or low literacy rate, that the entire race of people automatically are criminals or unintelligent.

It was already noted by DuBois that, in making the difference between races, it is not race that we think about, but culture: “…a common history, common laws and religion, similar habits of thought and a conscious striving together for certain ideals of life”[18] Late nineteenth century nationalists were the first to embrace contemporary discourses on "race", ethnicity and "survival of the fittest" to shape new nationalist doctrines. Ultimately, race came to represent not only the most important traits of the human body, but was also regarded as decisively shaping the character and personality of the nation.[19] According to this view, culture is the physical manifestation created by ethnic groupings, as such fully determined by racial characteristics. Culture and race became considered intertwined and dependent upon each other, sometimes even to the extent of including nationality or language to the set of definition. Pureness of race tended to be related to rather superficial characteristics that were easily addressed and advertised, such as blondness. Racial qualities tended to be related to nationality and language rather than the actual geographic distribution of racial characteristics. In the case of Nordicism, the denomination "Germanic" became virtually equivalent to superiority of race.

Bolstered by some nationalist and ethnocentric values and achievements of choice, this concept of racial superiority evolved to distinguish from other cultures, that were considered inferior or impure. This emphasis on culture corresponds to the modern mainstream definition of racism: "Racism does not originate from the existence of ‘races’. It creates them through a process of social division into categories: anybody can be racialised, independently of their somatic, cultural, religious differences."[20] This definition explicitly ignores the fiery polemic on the biological concept of race, still subject to scientific debate. In the words of David C. Rowe "A racial concept, although sometimes in the guise of another name, will remain in use in biology and in other fields because scientists, as well as lay persons, are fascinated by human diversity, some of which is captured by race."[21]

Until recent history this racist abuse of physical anthropology has been politically exploited. Apart from being unscientific, racial prejudice became subject to international legislation. For instance, the Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on November 20, 1963, address racial prejudice explicitly next to discrimination for reasons of race, colour or ethnic origin (Article I).[22]

Racism has been a motivating factor in social discrimination, racial segregation, hate speech and violence (such as pogroms, genocides and ethnic cleansings). Despite the persistence of racial stereotypes, humor and epithets in much everyday language, racial discrimination is illegal in many countries.

Ironically, anti-racism has also become a political instrument of abuse. Some politicians have practiced race baiting in an attempt to win votes. In a reversal of values, anti-racism is being propagated by despots in the service of obscurantism and the suppression of women. Said philosopher Pascal Bruckner:[23]

"Anti-racism in the UN has become the ideology of totalitarian regimes who use it in their own interests."


[edit] Ethnic nationalism
Further information: Ethnic nationalism and Romantic nationalism
After the Napoleonic Wars, Europe was confronted with the new "nationalities question," leading to ceaseless reconfigurations of the European map, on which the frontiers between the states had been delimited during the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. Nationalism had made its first striking appearance with the invention of the levée en masse by the French revolutionaries, thus inventing mass conscription in order to be able to defend the newly-founded Republic against the Ancien Régime order represented by the European monarchies. This led to the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802) and then to the Napoleonic conquests, and to the subsequent European-wide debates on the concepts and realities of nations, and in particular of nation-states. The Westphalia Treaty had divided Europe into various empires and kingdoms (Ottoman Empire, Holy Roman Empire, Swedish Empire, Kingdom of France, etc.), and for centuries wars were waged between princes (Kabinettskriege in German).

Modern nation-states appeared in the wake of the French Revolution, with the formation of patriotic sentiments for the first time in Spain during the Peninsula War (1808-1813 - known in Spanish as the Independence War). Despite the restoration of the previous order with the 1815 Congress of Vienna, the "nationalities question" became the main problem of Europe during the Industrial Era, leading in particular to the 1848 Revolutions, the Italian unification completed during the 1871 Franco-Prussian War, which itself culminated in the proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, thus achieving the German unification. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire, the "sick man of Europe," was confronted with endless nationalist movements, which, along with the dissolving of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, would lead to the creation after World War I of the various nation-states of the Balkans, which were always confronted, and remain so today, with the existence of "national minorities" in their borders.[24] Ethnic nationalism, which advocated the belief in a hereditary membership of the nation, made its appearance in the historical context surrounding the creation of the modern nation-states. One of its main influences was the Romantic nationalist movement at the turn of the 19th century, represented by figures such as Johann Herder (1744-1803), Johan Fichte (1762-1814) in the Addresses to the German Nation (1808), Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), or also, in France, Jules Michelet (1798-1874). It was opposed to liberal nationalism, represented by authors such as Ernest Renan (1823-1892), who conceived of the nation as a community which, instead of being based on the Volk ethnic group and on a specific, common language, was founded on the subjective will to live together ("the nation is a daily plebiscite", 1882) or also John Stuart Mill (1806-1873).[25]

Ethnic nationalism quickly blended itself with scientific racist discourses, as well as with "continental imperialist" (Hannah Arendt, 1951[26]) discourses, for example in the pan-Germanism discourses, which postulated the racial superiority of the German Volk. The Pan-German League (Alldeutscher Verband), created in 1891, promoted German imperialism, "racial hygiene" and was opposed to intermarriage with Jews. Another, popular current, the Völkisch movement, was also an important proponent of the German ethnic nationalist discourse, which it also combined with modern antisemitism. Members of the Völkisch movement, in particular the Thule Society, would participate in the founding of the German Workers' Party (DAP) in Munich in 1918, the predecessor of the NSDAP N-zi party. Pan-Germanism and played a decisive role in the interwar period of the 1920s-1930s.[26]

These currents began to associate the idea of the nation with the biological concept of a "master race" (often the "Aryan race" or "Nordic race") issued from the scientific racist discourse. They conflated nationalities with ethnic groups, called "races", in a radical distinction from previous racial discourses which posited the existence of a "race struggle" inside the nation and the state itself. Furthermore, they believed that political boundaries should mirror these alleged racial and ethnic groups, thus justifying ethnic cleansing in order to achieve "racial purity" and also to achieve ethnic homogeneity in the nation-state.

Such racist discourses, combined with nationalism, were not however limited to pan-Germanism. In France, the transition from Republican, liberal nationalism, to ethnic nationalism, which made nationalism a characteristic of far-right movements in France, took place during the Dreyfus Affair at the end of the 19th century. During several years, a nation-wide crisis affected French society, concerning the alleged treason of Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish military officer. The country polarized itself into two opposite camps, one represented by Émile Zola, who wrote J'accuse in defense of Alfred Dreyfus, and the other represented by the nationalist poet Maurice Barrès (1862-1923), one of the founders of the ethnic nationalist discourse in France.[27] At the same time, Charles Maurras (1868-1952), founder of the monarchist Action française movement, theorized the "anti-France," composed of the "four confederate states of Protestants, Jews, Freemasons and foreigners" (his actual word for the latter being the pejorative métèques, i.e. wogs)). Indeed, to him the first three were all "internal foreigners," who threatened the ethnic unity of the French people.


[edit] Ethnic conflicts
Further information: Ethnicity
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, although scholars attempt to clearly distinguish those phenomena from racism as an ideology or from scientific racism, which has little to do with ordinary xenophobia. Others conflate recent forms of racism with earlier forms of ethnic and national conflict. In most cases, ethno-national conflict seems to owe itself 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).

Notions of race and racism often have played central roles in such ethnic 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 material wealth often have been more ruthless, more brutal, and less constrained by moral or ethical considerations. According to historian Daniel Richter, Pontiac's Rebellion saw the emergence on both sides of the conflict of "the novel idea that all Native people were 'Indians,' that all Euro-Americans were 'Whites,' and that all on one side must unite to destroy the other." (Richter, Facing East from Indian Country, p. 208) Basil Davidson insists in his documentary, Africa: Different but Equal, that racism, in fact, only just recently surfaced—as late as the 1800s, due to the need for a justification for slavery in the Americas.

The idea of slavery as an "equal-opportunity employer" was denounced with the introduction of Christian theory in the West. Maintaining that Africans were "subhuman" was the only loophole in the then accepted law that "men are created equal" that would allow for the sustenance of the Triangular Trade. New peoples in the Americas, possible slaves, were encountered, fought, and ultimately subdued, but then due to western diseases, their populations drastically decreased. Through both influences, theories about "race" developed, 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).

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda argued that, during the Valladolid controversy in the middle of the 16th century, the Native Americans were natural slaves because they had no souls. In Asia, the Chinese and Japanese Empires were both strong colonial powers, with the Chinese making colonies and vassal states of much of East Asia throughout history, and the Japanese doing the same in the 19th-20th centuries. In both cases, the Asian imperial powers believed they were ethnically and racially preferenced too.


[edit] Academic variants
Further information: Race and intelligence

Drawings from Josiah C. Nott and George Gliddon's Indigenous races of the earth (1857), which suggested black people ranked between white people and chimpanzees in terms of intelligence.Academic racism was pushed by white supremacists during the period when white people garnered great profits from slavery and colonialism. Academic racism had the effect of attempting to deny the culture, history and ancestry from the victims of the profitable slave and colonial systems. Owen 'Alik Shahadah comments on this racism by stating: "Historically Africans are made to sway like leaves on the wind, impervious and indifferent to any form of civilization, a people absent from scientific discovery, philosophy or the higher arts. We are left to believe that almost nothing can come out of Africa, other than raw material."[28] Scottish philosopher and economist David Hume said, "I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilised nation of that complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or in speculation. No ingenious manufacture among them, no arts, no sciences."[29] German philosopher Immanuel Kant stated: "The yellow Indians do have a meagre talent. The Negroes are far below them, and at the lowest point are a part of the American people."[30]

In the nineteenth century, the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel declared that "Africa is no historical part of the world." Hegel further claimed that blacks had no "sense of personality; their spirit sleeps, remains sunk in itself, makes no advance, and thus parallels the compact, undifferentiated mass of the African continent" (On Blackness Without Blacks: Essays on the Image of the Black in Germany, Boston: C.W. Hall, 1982, p. 94). Fewer than 30 years before N-zi Germany started World War II, the German Otto Weininger, claimed: "A genius has perhaps scarcely ever appeared amongst the negroes, and the standard of their morality is almost universally so low that it is beginning to be acknowledged in America that their emancipation was an act of imprudence" (Sex and Character, New York: G.P. Putnam, 1906, p. 302).

The German conservative Oswald Spengler remarked on what he perceived as the culturally degrading influence of Africans in modern Western culture: in The Hour of Decision Spengler denounced "the 'happy ending' of an empty existence, the boredom of which has brought to jazz music and Negro dancing to perform the Death March for a great Culture" (The Hour of Decision, pp. 227–228). During the N-zi era, German scientists rearranged academia to support claims of a grand Aryan agent behind the splendors of all human civilizations, including India and Ancient Egypt.[30]


People Show (Völkerschau) in Stuttgart (Germany) in 1928.
[edit] Scientific variants
Main article: Scientific racism
Further information: Unilineal evolution
The modern biological definition of race developed in the 19th century with scientific racist theories. The term scientific racism refers to the use of science to justify and support racist beliefs, which goes back to at least the early 18th century, though it gained most of its influence in the mid-19th century, during the New Imperialism period. Also known as academic racism, such theories first needed to overcome the Church's resistance to positivist accounts of history, and its support of monogenism, that is that all human beings were originated from the same ancestors, in accordance with creationist accounts of history.

These racist theories put forth on scientific hypothesis were combined with unilineal theories of social progress which postulated the superiority of the European civilization over the rest of the world. Furthermore, they frequently made use of the idea of "survival of the fittest", a term coined by Herbert Spencer in 1864, associated with ideas of competition which were named social Darwinism in the 1940s. Charles Darwin himself opposed the idea of rigid racial differences in The Descent of Man (1871) in which he argued that humans were all of one species, sharing common descent. He recognised racial differences as varieties of humanity, and emphasised the close similarities between people of all races in mental faculties, tastes, dispositions and habits, while still contrasting the culture of the "lowest savages" with European civilization.[31][32]

At the end of the 19th century, proponents of scientific racism intertwined themselves with eugenics discourses of "degeneration of the race" and "blood heredity." Henceforth, scientific racist discourses could be defined as the combination of polygenism, unilinealism, social darwinism and eugenism. They found their scientific legitimacy on physical anthropology, anthropometry, craniometry, phrenology, physiognomy and others now discredited disciplines in order to formulate racist prejudices.

Before being disqualified in the 20th century by the American school of cultural anthropology (Franz Boas, etc.), the British school of social anthropology (Bronisław Malinowski, Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, etc.), the French school of ethnology (Claude Lévi-Strauss, etc.), as well as the discovery of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, such sciences, in particular anthropometry, were used to deduce behaviours and psychological characteristics from outward, physical appearances. The neo-Darwinian synthesis, first developed in the 1930s, eventually led to a gene-centered view of evolution in the 1960s, which seemed at first to be sufficient proof of the inanity of the "scientific racist" theories of the 19th centuries, which based their conception of evolution on "races", a concept which first appeared to lose any sense at the genetic level. However, the modern resurgence of racist theories, in particular those related to the race and intelligence controversy, seems to show that genetics could also be used for ideological, racist purposes.


[edit] Heredity and eugenics
Further information: Eugenics
The first theory of eugenics was developed in 1869 by Francis Galton (1822-1911), who used the then popular concept of degeneration. He applied statistics to study human differences and the alleged "inheritance of intelligence," foreshadowing future uses of "intelligence testing" by the anthropometry school. Such theories were vividly described by the writer Émile Zola (1840-1902), who started publishing in 1871 a twenty-novel cycle, Les Rougon-Macquart, where he linked heredity to behavior. Thus, Zola described the high-born Rougons as those involved in politics (Son Excellence Eugène Rougon) and medicine (Le Docteur Pascal) and the low-born Macquarts as those fatally falling into alcoholism (L'Assommoir), prostitution (Nana), and homicide (La Bête humaine).

During the rise of N-zism in Germany, some scientists in Western nations worked to debunk the regime's racial theories. A few argued against racist ideologies and discrimination, even if they believed in the alleged existence of biological races. However, in the fields of anthropology and biology, these were minority positions until the mid-20th century.[33] According to the 1950 UNESCO statement, The Race Question, an international project to debunk racist theories had been attempted in the mid-1930s. However, this project had been abandoned. Thus, in 1950, UNESCO declared that it had resumed:

up again, after a lapse of fifteen years, a project which the International Institute for Intellectual Co-operation has wished to carry through but which it had to abandon in deference to the appeasement policy of the pre-war period. The race question had become one of the pivots of N-zi ideology and policy. Masaryk and Beneš took the initiative of calling for a conference to re-establish in the minds and consciences of men everywhere the truth about race... N-zi propaganda was able to continue its baleful work unopposed by the authority of an international organisation.

The Third Reich's racial policies, its eugenics programs and the extermination of Jews in the Holocaust, as well as Romani people in the Porrajmos (the Romani Holocaust) and others minorities led to a change in opinions about scientific research into race after the war. Changes within scientific disciplines, such as the rise of the Boasian school of anthropology in the United States contributed to this shift. These theories were strongly denounced in the 1950 UNESCO statement, signed by internationally renowned scholars, and titled The Race Question.


[edit] Polygenism and racial typologies
Further information: Polygenism and Typology (anthropology)
Works such as Arthur de Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-1855) may be considered as one of the first theorizations of this new racism, founded on an essentialist notion of race, which opposed the former racial discourse, of Boulainvilliers for example, which saw in races a fundamentally historical reality which changed over time. Gobineau thus attempted to frame racism within the terms of biological differences among human beings, giving it the legitimacy of biology. He was one of the first theorists to postulate polygenism, stating that there were, at the origins of the world, various discrete "races." Gobineau's theories would be expanded, in France, by Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854-1936)'s typology of races, who published in 1899 The Aryan and his Social Role, in which he claimed that the white, "Aryan race", "dolichocephalic", was opposed to the "brachycephalic" race, of whom the "Jew" was the archetype. Vacher de Lapoug thus created a hierarchical classification of races, in which he identified the "Homo europaeus (Teutonic, Protestant, etc.), the "Homo alpinus" (Auvergnat, Turkish, etc.), and finally the "Homo mediterraneus" (Neapolitan, Andalus, etc.) He assimilated races and social classes, considering that the French upper class was a representation of the Homo europaeus, while the lower class represented the Homo alpinus. Applying Galton's eugenics to his theory of races, Vacher de Lapouge's "selectionism" aimed first at achieving the annihilation of trade unionists, considered to be a "degenerate"; second, creating types of man each destined to one end, in order to prevent any contestation of labour conditions. His "anthroposociology" thus aimed at blocking social conflict by establishing a fixed, hierarchical social order[34]

The same year than Vacher de Lapouge, William Z. Ripley used identical racial classification in The Races of Europe (1899), which would have a great influence in the United States. Others famous scientific authors include H.S. Chamberlain at the end of the 19th century (a British citizen who naturalized himself as German because of his admiration for the "Aryan race") or Madison Grant, a eugenicist and author of The Passing of the Great Race (1916).


[edit] Human Zoos
Human Zoos (called "People Shows"), were an important means of bolstering popular racism by connecting it to scientific racism: they were both objects of public curiosity and of anthropology and anthropometry.[35][36] Joice Heth, an African American slave, was displayed by P.T. Barnum in 1836, a few years after the exhibition of Saartjie Baartman, the "Hottentot Venus", in England. Such exhibitions became common in the New Imperialism period, and remained so until World War II. Carl Hagenbeck, inventor of the modern zoos, exhibited animals aside of human beings considered as "savages".[37][38] Congolese pygmy Ota Benga was displayed in 1906 by eugenicist Madison Grant, head of the Bronx Zoo, as an attempt to illustrate the "missing link" between humans and orangutans: thus, racism was tied to Darwinism, creating a social Darwinism ideology which tried to ground itself in Darwin's scientific discoveries. The 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition displayed Kanaks from New Caledonia.[39] A "Congolese village" was on display as late as 1958 at the Brussels' World Fair.


[edit] Evolutionary theories about the origins of racism
Biologists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides were puzzled by the fact that race is one of the three characteristics most often used in brief descriptions of individuals (the others are age and sex). They reasoned that natural selection would not have favoured the evolution of an instinct for using race as a classification, because most of the earliest humans, who lived in Africa, would never have met a member of a different race. Tooby and Cosmides hypothesized that modern people use race as a proxy (rough-and-ready indicator) for coalition membership, since a better-than-random guess about "which side" another person is on will be helpful if one does not actually know in advance.

Their colleague Robert Kurzban designed an experiment whose results appeared to support this hypothesis. Using the Memory confusion protocol, they presented subjects with pictures of individuals and sentences, allegedly spoken by these individuals, which presented two sides of a debate. The errors which the subjects made in recalling who said what indicated that they sometimes misattributed a statement to a speaker of the same race as the "correct" speaker, although they also sometimes misattributed a statement to a speaker "on the same side" as the "correct" speaker. In a second run of the experiment, the team also distinguished the "sides" in the debate by clothing of similar colors; and in this case the effect of racial similarity in causing mistakes almost vanished, being replaced by the color of their clothing. In other words, the first group of subjects, with no clues from clothing, used race as a visual guide to guessing who was on which side of the debate; the second group of subjects used the clothing color as their main visual clue, and the effect of race became very small. [40]


[edit] As state-sponsored activity

U.S government poster from WWII featuring a Japanese soldier depicted as a rat.Main articles: N-zism and race, Racial policy of N-zi Germany, Generalplan Ost, Eugenics in Showa Japan, Apartheid in South Africa, Racial segregation in the United States, Anti-Chinese legislation in Indonesia, and Anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea
State racism - that is, institutions and practices of a nation-state that are grounded in racist ideology - has played a major role in all instances of settler colonialism, from the United States to Australia to Israel. It also played a prominent role in the N-zi Germany regime and fascist regimes in Europe, and in the first part of Japan's Shōwa period. The politics of Zimbabwe promote discrimination against whites, in an effort of ethnically cleansing the country.[6] State racism contributed as well to the formation of the Dominican Republic's identity [7] and violent actions encouraged by Dominican governmental xenophobia against Haitans and "Haitian looking" people. Currently the Dominican Republic employs a de facto system of separatism for children and grandchildren of Haitians and black Dominicans, denying them birth certificates, education and access to health care.[41] These governments advocated and implemented policies that were racist, xenophobic and, in case of N-zism, genocidal. [42][43][44]


[edit] In history

[edit] In Antiquity
Several authors have put forward the idea that racism may have its roots in Classical Antiquity or the Middle Ages. Chouki El Hamel has cited the Talmud, which divides mankind between the three sons of Noah, stating that "the descendants of Ham are cursed by being black, and [it] depicts Ham as a sinful man and his progeny as degenerates."[45] Bernard Lewis has cited the Greek philosopher Aristotle who, in his discussion of slavery, stated that while Greeks are free by nature, 'barbarians' (non-Greeks) are slaves by nature, in that it is in their nature to be more willing to submit to despotic government, although Lewis has to admit that Aristotle does not specify any particular races.[46] In Cicero's Letters to Atticus, 68 BC-43 BC, Cicero states "Do not obtain your slaves from Britain because they are so stupid and so utterly incapable of being taught that they are not fit to form a part of the household of Athens." Slavery began to be questioned in the Greek world, first in the Socratic Dialogues while the Stoics produced the first recorded condemnation of slavery.[47] Slavery also occurred in ancient Israel and ancient Egypt, and the Bible contains passages that can be interpreted as promoting, being neutral towards, or opposing racism.[48][49][50][51][52][53] In the First Book of Samuel in the Old Testament, God instructs Saul to commit genocide against the Amalek people: "Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." (1 Sam. 15:2-3).


[edit] In the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance
Further information: Limpieza de sangre
Lewis also cites the Arab Empire, the first "truly universal civilization," which brought together for the first time "peoples as diverse as the Chinese, the Indians, the people of the Middle East and North Africa, black Africans, and white Europeans." While the Qur'an, the Prophet Muhammad, and the overwhelming majority of Islamic jurists and theologians, all stated that humankind has a single origin and rejected the idea of certain ethnic groups being superior to others, some ethnic prejudices later developed among Arabs due to several reasons: their extensive conquests and slave trade; the misinterpretation of Aristotelian ideas regarding slavery, echoed by Muslim philosophers, particularly in regards to black and Turkic peoples;[46] and the influence of Judeo-Christian ideas regarding divisions among humankind.[54] In response to such views, the Afro-Arab author Al-Jahiz, himself of East African descent, wrote a book entitled Superiority Of The Blacks To The Whites,[55] and explained why the Zanj (East Africans) were black in terms of environmental determinism in the "On the Zanj" chapter of The Essays.[56] By the 14th century, a significant number of slaves came from sub-Saharan Africa, leading to the likes of Egyptian historian Al-Abshibi (1388-1446) writing: "It is said that when the [black] slave is sated, he fornicates, when he is hungry, he steals."[57] The 14th century Arab sociologist Ibn Khaldun Has often been mistranslated to fit the needs of colonial propaganda. [58] Although bias against those of very black complexion existed in the Arab world in the 15th century it didn't have as much stigma as it later would. Older translations of Ibn Khaldun, for example in The Negro land of the Arabs Examined and Explained which was written in 1841 gives excerpts of older translations that were not part of later colonial propaganda and show black Africans in a generally positive light.

When the conquest of the West (by the Arabs) was completed, and merchants began to penetrate into the interior, they saw no nation of the Blacks so mighty as Ghanah, the dominions of which extended westward as far as the Ocean. The King's court was kept in the city of Ghanah, which, according to the author of the Book of Roger (El Idrisi), and the author of the Book of Roads and Realms (El Bekri), is divided into two parts, standing on both banks of the Nile, and ranks among the largest and most populous cities of the world. The people of Ghanah had for neighbours, on the east, a nation, which, according to historians, was called Susu; after which came another named Mali; and after that another known by the name of Kaukau ; although some people prefer a different orthography, and write this name Kagho. The last-named nation was followed by a people called Tekrur. The people of Ghanah declined in course of time, being overwhelmed or absorbed by the Molaththemun (or muffled people;that is, the Morabites), who, adjoining them on the north towards the Berber country, attacked them, and, taking possession of their territory, compelled them to embrace the Mohammedan religion. The people of Ghanah, being invaded at a later period by the Susu, a nation of Blacks in their neighbourhood, were exterminated, or mixed with other Black nations. [[59]]
Ibn Khaldun suggests a link between the decline of Ghana and rise of the Almoravids. however, there is little evidence of there actually being an Almoravid conquest of Ghana [[60]] [61] He also dispelled the Hamitic theory as a myth, stating that black skin was due to environmental determinism and not because of any curse.[62] The Arabic geographer Ibn Battuta, who had visited the Mali Empire in 1352, wrote many positive comments on black people.[63][64]

Richard E. Nisbett has said that the question of racial superiority may go back at least a thousand years, to the time when the Umayyad Caliphate invaded Hispania, occupying most of the Iberian Peninsula for six centuries, where they founded the advanced civilization of Al-Andalus (711-1492). Al-Andalus coincided with La Convivencia, an era of religious tolerance, and with the Golden age of Jewish culture in Iberia (912, the rule of Abd-ar-Rahman III - 1066, Granada massacre).[65] It was followed by a violent Reconquista under the Reyes Catolicos (Catholic Kings), Ferdinand V and Isabella I. The Catholic Spaniards then formulated the Cleanliness of blood doctrine. It was during this time in history that the Western concept of aristocratic "blue blood" emerged in a highly racialized and implicitly white supremacist context, as author Robert Lacey explains:

It was the Spaniards who gave the world the notion that an aristocrat's blood is not red but blue. The Spanish nobility started taking shape around the ninth century in classic military fashion, occupying land as warriors on horseback. They were to continue the process for more than five hundred years, clawing back sections of the peninsula from its Moorish occupiers, and a nobleman demonstrated his pedigree by holding up his sword arm to display the filigree of blue-blooded veins beneath his pale skin--proof that his birth had not been contaminated by the dark-skinned enemy. Sangre azul, blue blood, was thus a euphemism for being a white man--Spain's own particular reminder that the refined footsteps of the aristocracy through history carry the rather less refined spoor of racism.[66]

Following the expulsion of most Sephardic Jews from the Iberian peninsula, the remaining Jews and Muslims were forced to convert to Roman Catholicism, becoming "New Christians" which were despised and discriminated by the "Old Christians". An Inquisition was carried out by members of the Dominican Order in order to weed out converts that still practiced Judaism and Islam in secret. The system and ideology of the limpieza de sangre ostracized Christian converts from society, regardless of their actual degree of sincerity in their faith. In Portugal, the legal distinction between New and Old Christian was only ended through a legal decree issued by the Marquis of Pombal in 1772, almost three centuries after the implementation of the racist discrimination. The limpieza de sangre doctrine was also very common in the colonization of the Americas, where it led to the racial separation of the various peoples in the colonies and created a very intricate list of nomenclature to describe one's precise race and, by consequence, one's place in society. This precise classification was described by Eduardo Galeano in the Open Veins of Latin America (1971). It included, among others terms, mestizo (50% Spaniard and 50% Native American), castizo (75% European and 25% Native American), Spaniard (87.5% European and 12.5% Native American), Mulatto (50% European and 50% African), Albarazado (43.75% Native American, 29.6875% European, and 26.5625% African), etc.

At the end of the Renaissance, the Valladolid debate (1550-1551) concerning the treatment of natives of the "New World" opposed the Dominican friar and Bishop of Chiapas Bartolomé de Las Casas to another Dominican philosopher Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. The latter argued that "Indians" were natural slaves because they had no souls, and were therefore beneath humanity. Thus, reducing them to slavery or serfdom was in accordance with Catholic theology and natural law. To the contrary, Bartolomé de Las Casas argued that the Amerindians were free men in the natural order and deserved the same treatment as others, according to Catholic theology. It was one of the many controversy concerning racism, slavery and Eurocentrism that would arise in the following centuries.

Although anti-Semitism has a long European history, related to Christianism (anti-Judaism), racism itself is frequently described as a modern phenomenon. In the view of the French intellectual Michel Foucault, the first formulation of racism emerged in the Early Modern period as the "discourse of race struggle", a historical and political discourse which Foucault opposed to the philosophical and juridical discourse of sovereignty.[67] Philosopher and historian Michel Foucault argued that the first appearance of racism as a social discourse (as opposed to simple xenophobia, which some might argue has existed in all places and times) may be found during the 1688 Glorious Revolution in Great Britain, in Edward Coke or John Lilburne's work.

However, this "discourse of race struggle", as interpreted by Foucault, must be distinguished from 19th century biological racism, also known as "race science" or "scientific racism". Indeed, this early modern discourse has many points of difference with modern racism. First of all, in this "discourse of race struggle", "race" is not considered a biological notion — which would divide humanity into distinct biological groups — but as a historical notion. Moreover, this discourse is opposed to the sovereign's discourse: it is used by the bourgeoisie, the people and the aristocracy as a mean of struggle against the monarchy. This discourse, which first appeared in Great Britain, was then carried on in France by people such as Boulainvilliers, Nicolas Fréret, and then, during the 1789 French Revolution, Sieyès, and afterward Augustin Thierry and Cournot. Boulainvilliers, which created the matrix of such racist discourse in medieval France, conceived the "race" as something closer to the sense of "nation", that is, in his times, the "people".

He conceived France as divided between various nations — the unified nation-state is, of course, here an anachronism — which themselves formed different "races". Boulainvilliers opposed the absolute monarchy, who tried to bypass the aristocracy by establishing a direct relationship to the Third Estate. Thus, he created this theory of the French aristocrats as being the descendants of foreign invaders, whom he called the "Franks", while the Third Estate constituted according to him the autochthonous, vanquished Gallo-Romans, who were dominated by the Frankish aristocracy as a consequence of the right of conquest. Early modern racism was opposed to nationalism and the nation-state: the Comte de Montlosier, in exile during the French Revolution, who borrowed Boulainvilliers' discourse on the "Nordic race" as being the French aristocracy that invaded the plebeian "Gauls", thus showed his despise for the Third Estate calling it "this new people born of slaves... mixture of all races and of all times".

While 19th century racism became closely intertwined with nationalism, leading to the ethnic nationalist discourse which identified the "race" to the "folk", leading to such movements as pan-Germanism, Zionism, pan-Turkism, pan-Arabism, and pan-Slavism, medieval racism precisely divided the nation into various non-biological "races", which were thought as the consequences of historical conquests and social conflicts. Michel Foucault traced the genealogy of modern racism to this medieval "historical and political discourse of race struggle". According to him, it divided itself in the 19th century according to two rival lines: on one hand, it was incorporated by racists, biologists and eugenicists, who gave it the modern sense of "race" and, even more, transformed this popular discourse into a "state racism" (e.g. N-zism). On the other hand, Marxists also seized this discourse founded on the assumption of a political struggle which provided the real engine of history and continued to act underneath the apparent peace. Thus, Marxists transformed the essentialist notion of "race" into the historical notion of "class struggle", defined by socially structured position: capitalist or proletarian. In The Will to Knowledge (1976), Foucault analyzed another opponent of the "race struggle" discourse: Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis, which opposed the concepts of "blood heredity", prevalent in the 19th century racist discourse.


[edit] As part of colonialism in the 19th century
Further information: Second European colonization wave (19th century–20th century)
Authors such as Hannah Arendt, in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, have said that the racist ideology (popular racism) which developed at the end of the 19th century helped legitimize the imperialist conquests of foreign territories and the acts that accompanied them (such as the Herero and Namaqua Genocide of 1904-1907 or the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1917). Rudyard Kipling's poem The White Man's Burden (1899) is one of the more famous illustrations of the belief in the inherent superiority of the European culture over the rest of the world, though also thought to be a satirical appraisal of such imperialism. Racist ideology thus helped legitimize subjugation and the dismantling of the traditional societies of indigenous peoples, which were thus conceived as humanitarian obligations as a result of these racist beliefs.

However, during the 19th century, West European colonial powers were involved in the suppression of the Arab slave trade in Africa,[68] as well as in suppression of the slave trade in West Africa.[69] Other colonialists recognized the depravity of their actions but persisted for personal gain and there are some Europeans during the time period who objected to the injustices caused by colonialism and lobbied on behalf of aboriginal peoples. Thus, when the Hottentot Venus was displayed in England in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the African Association publicly opposed itself to the exhibition. The same year that Kipling published his poem, Joseph Conrad published Heart of Darkness (1899), a clear criticism of the Congo Free State owned by Leopold II of Belgium.

Examples of racial theories used to legitimize the imperialist conquest[citation needed] include the creation of the Hamitic ethno-linguistic group during the European exploration of Africa. Used in different ways, the term was first used by Johann Ludwig Krapf (1810-1881) to qualify all languages of Africa spoken by black people.[citation needed] It was then restricted by Karl Friedrich Lepsius (1810-1877) to non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages.[70]

The term Hamite then became quite popular and was applied to different populations within Africa mainly comprising Ethiopians, Eritreans, Somalis, Berbers, and Nubians. Hamites were regarded as Caucasoid peoples who probably originated in either Arabia or Asia on the basis of their cultural, physical and linguistic similarities with the peoples of those areas.[71][72][73] Europeans considered Hamites to be more civilized than Black Africans, and more akin to themselves and Semitic peoples.[74] In the first two-thirds of the 20th century, the Hamitic race was, in fact, considered one of the branches of the Caucasian race, along with the Indo-Europeans, Dravidians, Semites, and the Mediterranean race.

However, the Hamitic peoples themselves were often deemed to have failed as rulers, a failing that was usually ascribed to interbreeding with Negroes. In the mid-20th century, the German scholar Carl Meinhof (1857-1944) claimed that the Bantu race was formed by a merger of Hamitic and Negro races. The Hottentots (Nama or Khoi) were formed by the merger of Hamitic and Bushmen (San) races — both being termed nowadays as Khoisan peoples). The term Hamitic is nowadays obsolete.[citation needed]

Racism spread throughout the "New World" in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Whitecapping which started in Indiana in the late 19th century soon spread throughout all of North America, causing many African laborers to flee from the land they worked on.

On June 5, 1873, Sir Francis Galton, distinguished English explorer and cousin of Charles Darwin, wrote in a letter to The Times:

"My proposal is to make the encouragement of Chinese settlements of Africa a part of our national policy, in the belief that the Chinese immigrants would not only maintain their position, but that they would multiply and their descendants supplant the inferior Negro race" "I should expect that the African seaboard, now sparsely occupied by lazy, palavering savages, might in a few years be tenanted by industrious, order-loving Chinese, living either as a semidetached dependency of China, or else in perfect freedom under their own law." [75]


[edit] In the Age of Enlightenment
While modern racism has an essentialist and biological conception of race, racist or xenophobic opinions have been shared by some authors, from the Antiquity to the Age of Enlightenment. However, this early form of racism did not conceive of "race" as a biological concept — as biology itself did not exist as such —, but as the accidental effect of climate on physical traits.[76] With the Age of Discovery, the diversity of mankind became an important topic of research, leading to debates concerning monogenism and polygenism, respectively endorsing the unique origin of mankind (coherent with the Genesis Biblical account) and the multiple origins of mankind. Pierre de Maupertuis (1698-1759), for example, reconciled the Biblical account with the present diversity of "races" in his Essai de philosophie morale (1749, Essay on Moral Philosophy), explaining "racial" differences by climatic factors.[76] He thus explained the colour of black people through the inheritance of acquired characteristics, claiming white was the original colour of mankind.[76] He also highlighted the spiritual strength of Africans seized as slaves, pointing out how, like the Ancient Stoic philosophers, they prefer to die rather than to survive to capture.[76] Arguments on the influence of climate found additional weight with Buffon's Histoire naturelle in the middle of the 18th century, and his thesis on the unity of mankind was taken back by Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie in the article Humaine, espèce (Human, Specie).[76] According to Ann Thomson, although Buffon did establish a "clear hierarchy [...] between the beautiful white civilised races of the temperate zone and those savages who have degenerated in more extreme climates, his emphasis on the unity of the human race and his distinction between humans and other animals were extremely influential.[76]" The abolitionists thus used his arguments to show that Africans were not naturally inferior, and could be improved by different treatment and different climate.[76]

The abbé Demanet (1767) claimed that a Portuguese colony in Africa had become black after several generations, due to the effect of climate, a story which was given wide credence by abolitionists, quoted for example by Cabanis (1757-1808) and Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846)[76][76] The abolitionist Physiocrat abbé Pierre-Joseph-André Roubaud alleged that black Africans would change skin colour if they lived in different climatic conditions.[76] According to Ann Thomson,

What emerges from these examples is the overwhelming desire to insist on the unity of the human race by emphasizing the effect of the climate and other environmental causes, but not necessarily to claim the equality of all humans; for the existence of a hierarchy is not systematically denied but, on the contrary, frequently accepted [exceptions quoted by Thomson includes James Dunbar and the abbé Grégoire.]. This of course was to have long-lasting effects in the Nineteenth Century, when the arguments about climate were countered and the hierarchy was seen to be permanent, as the differences between humans were innate.[76]

Moral factors were also considered to influence physical and psychical traits. The American abolitionist Anthony Benezet stated, in the Historical Account of Guinea (1772), that Africans in Africa were a sociable, virtuous and intelligent people; but that their servile condition in America explained their "degeneration" and adoption of the vices of Europeans.[76] Furthermore, the theory of the Great Chain of Being, which asserted a continuity between animals and humans, thus contradicting Christian religion (and henceforth supported by materialists such as Diderot) was used by some, such as Edward Long, spokesman for the West India Lobby, or Charles White’s Account of the Regular Gradation in Man (1799 — White denied the effect of climate) to assert the animal nature of some humans.[76]


[edit] 20th century
During the first part of the Shōwa era, the propaganda of the Empire of Japan used the old concept of hakko ichiu to support the idea that the Yamato was a superior race, destined to rule Asia and the Pacific. Many documents such as Kokutai no Hongi, Shinmin no Michi and An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus referred to this concept of racial supremacy. Racial discrimination against other Asians was habitual in Imperial Japan [77] and the Shōwa regime thus preached racial superiority and racialist theories, based on sacred nature of the Yamato-damashii. According to historian Kurakichi Shiratori, one of emperor Shōwa's teachers :«Therefore nothing in the world compares to the divine nature (shinsei) of the imperial house and likewise the majesty of our national polity (kokutai). Here is one great reason for Japan's superiority.»[78]


[edit] Inter-minority variants
In

fdt - 6-26-2009 at 05:26 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by CaboRon
Quote:
Originally posted by Skeet/Loreto
Cabo:

Where did you go to School? or did you??


San Diego State University and UC Berkeley



SDSU and UC Berkley and all you can do is copy / paste from wikipedia?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism :lol::lol::lol::lol:

Skeet/Loreto - 6-26-2009 at 05:45 PM

This is a prime example of the "Higher places of Learning" imposing a bunch of "Gobblygook" on to their students and getting them to belive that it is the "Factual Truth".

Very simply put by an old timer: Racism is when a person judges another person by the color of their skin, the slant of their eyes, their parents.


I judge people by their Acts: for Example my statement about enjoying the Mexican people more than the Canadains was a simple staement of the feeling taken from being around people from different Countries.

Apparentaly Cabo has not the Education or if it came from San Diego or Berkerley it was "Spin". not factual.

Corruption from Public officials comes from each individual Border patrol Officer, not from a Group of people, no matter what their "Race""/


It is diffcult for this old timer to understand the Younger Generation putting so much into the Words of folks instead of their Actions;== Has nothing to do with their Color /Race. Period!!

k-rico - 6-26-2009 at 05:57 PM

If Skeet said he preferred Americans to Canadians, Cabron, like most everybody, wouldn't have smelled racism

Cabron is actually guilty of racism.

His accusation of racism when Skeet said he preferred Mexicans to Canadians is racist because the accusation is based on a perceived difference in skin color.

When in fact, although a minority, there are many fair skinned, blue eyed Mexicans.

Besides, who is harmed by Skeet's preferences? Is his discrimination to the detriment of anyone?

The Canadians on the message board may well be thinking, "thank God!" ;D


[Edited on 6-27-2009 by k-rico]

doradodan - 6-26-2009 at 06:03 PM

all those bp officers can kiss my #$%. I am sick of "take off your glasses" "what do you do for a living" it's my country, let me in you dumb@#$. fire em all

Bajajack - 6-26-2009 at 06:23 PM

I not sure but I may be a Racist, please help me decide.

When I have a choice of a slim light skinned beauty from Mexico City that speaks understandable Spanish or one of the Blubber Butts from Baja that only grunts periodically what should I do.

Do I take the street mutt home and be known as a good old boy for my compassion and understanding.

Or do I grab that well groomed Poodle and head for wherever for my own personal satisfaction.

Seems like a no brainer to me but perhaps I missed something along the way.

:cool:

rpleger - 6-27-2009 at 07:03 AM

BAJAJACK...

Yes you are....

Bajajack - 6-27-2009 at 08:56 AM

Oh, thank you, I was really worried I might be backsliding.

:lol: