What Do You Mean By Racism?

The importance of defining a word, before we use it in a conversation

Perhaps the greatest difficulty in attempting to speak or write objectively about such an emotionally charged subject as racism is that before anything has been said, before even a tentative opinion has been expressed, the very word itself evokes strong feelings in most people living in the western world. This is caused in part because many people are unclear about what the word ‘racism’ actually means, or more precisely what other people using the expression means by it, and this inevitably causes tensions to arise. Racial prejudice and discrimination are, for instance, very different things from simply holding a belief that members of one ethnicity might have certain statistical tendencies regarding the levels of hormones circulating in their bloodstream, average cognitive ability or the age at which children in that group are likely to stand up and walk. Using the same word to encompass these two, very different, things,  will obviously create confusion. Muddling up racial prejudice with nationalism or xenophobia, which is frequently done, also leads to needless unpleasantness.

     It is quite impossible to have a coherent discussion about any subject under the sun, unless we agree beforehand on the meaning of the words which we use. Most of the time, this is not necessary. If we are talking about giraffes, say, I can be pretty sure that the person to whom I am speaking will understand by the word, that I am speaking of a large, spotty mammal with an elongated neck, which roams the plains of sub-Saharan Africa. This means that a sensible conversation about giraffes is possible with almost anybody in the English-speaking world. The case is quite different with the word ‘racism’, which means different things to different people.

     I have in front of me the Oxford Dictionary of English, second edition, revised 2005. It gives the following definitions of racism;

The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics,

abilities or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to

distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races

Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone

of a different race based on such a belief

(Oxford Dictionary of English, 2005)

I intentionally used a fairly old edition of a dictionary, for these two definitions of racism have been around for many years. A new definition is in the process of emerging though, as I shall later explain. The second part of the definition from the Oxford Dictionary of English is easily disposed of. The idea of discriminating against anybody because of ethnicity is probably repugnant to most people. If a black person or somebody of Asian heritage scores highly enough on the American Scholastic Aptitude test or in the British A Levels to qualify for a place at Harvard, Yale, Oxford or Cambridge, then most of us would see no conceivable reason for preventing access. The same applies to housing, schools, employment, and anything else.

     When it comes to actual racial prejudice, all the indications are that this has been declining steadily for decades, both in Britain and other countries in Europe, as well as in the United States. In 1983 between 50 and 60 % of white people in Britain would have minded ‘a lot’ or ‘a little’ if a close relative married somebody of a different ethnic group. By 2013, fewer than 25 % felt this way (NatCen, 2014). By these standards, racism in the sense of racial prejudice is declining, at least in the United Kingdom.

     It is the first of the dictionary definitions which is liable to cause problems. As it stands, with its blunt talk of races and superiority and inferiority, most people would reject this notion as swiftly as they would any idea of prejudice or discrimination. Alter it slightly though and replace ‘races’ with ‘ethnic groups’ or ‘human populations’ and you might end up with something which many people would think seriously about. Let us suppose, just for the sake of argument, that we put forward the proposition that members of certain ethnic groups tended to have abilities and qualities which differed from those of some other ethnic groups. One suspects that many of us would have to think this idea through very carefully before rejecting it out of hand. This idea, that people from Africa might tend to have different and innate characteristics from those from China, has been called ‘scientific racism’ and there is an increasing body of evidence to suggest that there may be something here to consider.

We have looked at two, very different meanings to the word ‘racism’, but a third is becoming popular. At the time of writing efforts are being made, particularly in the United States, to change the definitions of racism currently found in our dictionaries and insert mention of an imbalance of power as being an essential ingredient of racism. The difficulty in even agreeing a definition of racism in a dictionary shows how many pitfalls await the ordinary person who is trying to decide what racism is. The story of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s change of their definition shows some of the problems.

The 2019 edition of the American Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary gives the following definition of racism,

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. a) a doctrine or political program based on the assumption of racism and designed to execute its principles, b) a political or social system founded on racism

3. racial prejudice or discrimination

This seems very clear and surely comprehensive. However, on 28 May 2020, three days after the death of George Floyd, a young, black student in the United States sent an email to Merriam-Webster, asking them to consider altering the definition to include the idea of racism as entailing systemic oppression and being dependent for its existence upon an imbalance of power (BBC, 2020). Kennedy Mitchum asked that the dictionary be updated in this way when the next edition was published. A spokesperson for Merriam-Webster agreed to consider the matter. Kennedy Mitchum was by no means a lone voice in the wilderness, this particular definition of racism had been widely accepted among left-wingers and academics for several years.

Rather than simplifying and making things easier, a definition of racism which includes the necessity for it to be connected in some way with ‘systemic oppression’, as in ‘institutionalised racism’, is fraught with hazard. For one thing, adopting it in Europe and the United States will have the effect of exculpating members of any minority from a charge of racism. If a black employer refuses to hire Chinese workers because he feels an antipathy to those of East Asian origin, this could not be considered racism, because it is not part of systemic oppression, but rather an individual dislike. In this way, black people, those from the Indian sub-continent, Arabs and people of East Asian heritage will gain a free pass for expressing detestation of Jews, Hispanics, and anybody else they don’t care for. Instinctively, we feel that something might be wrong here.

The latest online definition of racism by Merriam-Webster now includes this new concept, saying that racism is;

the systemic oppression of a racial group to the social, economic, and political

advantage of another

(Merriam-Webster, 2021)

At once we see that in the Western world, racism becomes an exclusively white practice. In Europe and North America it is, by and large, white people who are in control of the social, economic, and political systems which may be used for oppression and so they alone are capable of racism. The definition of racism as simple prejudice or discrimination has now disappeared. For most of us, this is of more than academic interest, because we know that prejudice on racial grounds is horribly common in all countries and among every ethnicity, but that it is usually carried out on a haphazard and informal basis, rather than as a means to inflict systematic oppression. Ghanaians sometimes speak disparagingly of Nigerians, black Caribbeans make unfortunate remarks about Africans, suggesting that they are backwards and unsophisticated, it is not uncommon for black people to express antipathy towards Jews, Koreans, or Pakistanis; the list of such ‘racial prejudice or discrimination’, to use Merriam-Webster's old definition, is lengthy and depressing. All this has now been wiped clean and white people alone are to be blamed for any racism which is seen.

  There is of course tremendous confusion as well between racism and xenophobia. Disliking people in a neighbouring country is perhaps undesirable, but dislike of, and contempt for, foreigners has been around for the whole of recorded history and does not rely upon the targets of hostility belonging to a different ethnicity or species. Historic enmity and mutual contempt underpinned the relations between England and Ireland for centuries and has not to this day wholly abated, but nobody in his or her senses would assert that the English and Irish belong to different races, although this was indeed done in the nineteenth century. Nationalism and racism are quite different things

.

It is quite reasonable to make generalisations about different nationalities, because these are based upon culture. Fifty or sixty years ago, it was the custom in Britain for people to have one bath a week; this was spoken of as ‘bath night’, which typically took place on a Sunday, before the beginning of the working week. At the same time in Sweden, the majority of people would wash their bodies in a shower or bath every day, a habit which of course has now spread across Europe until it is common even in Britain. It would therefore have been perfectly possible to suggest at that time that the British were more unclean in the habits than Swedes. Different nationalities vary in their customs and traditions and one can make observations about these differences without racism entering into the matter at all.

What this means is that trying to discuss racism with anybody can be a hazardous undertaking and entail attempting to guess what ‘baggage’ they are bringing to the debate in terms of strongly held views about the legacy of colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade and immigration; to name but three topics which colour views around the very idea of racism. Even discussing history, by saying anything at all about the ancient world will, as a matter of course, place you in one or other of various hostile and opposing camps. Expressing admiration for the Roman Empire or ancient Greek nations, to give one example, will lay one open to a charge of belonging to the ‘Alt Right’, some of whom see Sparta and Athens as the font of Western civilisation and, by extension, white culture. A book published on this subject in 2019 claimed that, ‘The use of classical imagery to promote a white nationalist agenda is far from an isolated occurrence’ (Zuckerberg, 2019). Even apparently innocuous speculation surrounding the Greek custom of painting their statues in vivid colours can be interpreted in terms of white supremacy. An article in an online magazine went into detail about how the impression of whiteness gained from looking at white statues and marble temples could encourage a false impression of the past; ‘The assemblage of neon whiteness serves to create a false idea of homogeneity — everyone was very white!’ (Bond, 2017).

     By all of which, it will be seen that any conversation relating to racism, even in the most tangential fashion, is bound to lead to misunderstanding and, quite possibly, ill-feeling, unless care is first taken to define precisely what each of the participants actually means by the word.

                                                       References

BBC News Report (2020) Racism definition: Merriam-Webster to make update after request, 10/6/20.

Bond, Sarah E. (2017) Why we need to start seeing the classical world in colour, New York: Hyperallergic.

Merriam-Webster (2019) Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition, Springfield MA: Merriam-Webster Inc.

Merriam-Webster (2021) “Racism.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racism. Accessed 6 Mar. 2021.

NatCen Social Research (2014) 30 years of British Social Attitudes self-reported racial prejudice data, London: NatCen.

Oxford Dictionary of English (2005) Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zuckerberg, Donna (2019) Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Pr