We explain what racism is and what types of racism exist. Also, what is your relationship with discrimination and what is a prejudice.
What is racism?
By racism we mean a way of thought that automatically approves or rejects an individual, without taking on the task of knowing him or knowing who he is, only as he belongs to one or another race. That is, a form of preference, segregation or exclusion based on the color of the skin, the ethnic lineage or the cultural origin.
The racism usually leads to discriminatory practices, such as the granting of privileges (social, economic, legal, etc.) to one race over another, or the refusal to associate with persons from other ethnicities.
All of this is known as discrimination racial and is part of the hate crimes typified in numerous international conventions that persecute the equality Between people.
This is also due to the long history of racism that the humanity has starred since ancient times, and reaches moments of true terror in episodes such as enslavement of African continent and their descendants by the European empires, or the ethnic cleansing that the German Nazi regime attempted to carry out during the WWII, to cite just two cases.
The fight against racism occurs at different levels, both community, state or international; In fact, the United Nations Organization adopted since 1965 the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, thus celebrating March 21 as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
Racism is a concept closely related to xenophobia, although they are not exactly synonymous. In addition, racism can arise from the color of the skin, the shape of the features or even more elaborate and difficult to express criteria.
Types of racism
There are many ways to express racism, such as:
- Cultural racism. It is called this way when it is rejected or denigrates of the traditions coming from an ethnic group considered "inferior" or "bad", advocating a culture "Pure". The irony is that no culture is really pure, but rather the result of processes historical assimilation and mixing that today are undetectable.
- Institutional racism. There is talk of institutional racism when institutions of Condition operate on the basis of racial discrimination, that is, when the Justice acts differently according to the skin color of the citizen, or when racist practices are internalized and normalized within the police, as is the case in certain US states.
- Reverse racism or "positive" racial discrimination. It occurs when an individual belonging to the majority ethnic group is discriminated, that is, who is not normally discriminated against, or also when privileges are given to an individual who belongs to a discriminated ethnic group, as compensation for belonging to it. For example, when university places are granted for members of one ethnic group only.
- Aversive racism. This term is used to refer to subtle racism and xenophobia, concealed within positions supposedly contrary to conventional racism. It can be considered a form of unconscious racism, since the individual may consciously not want to be, but certain unconscious actions reveal his discomfort or coldness in front of members of other races.
- Hidden racism. Hidden racism is a non-explicit discriminatory form, which legitimates and extends racism in an indirect way, often disguising its arguments as pseudosciences, political reasons or social judgments that in appearance are not racist but “objective”, but hide a form of excluding thought.
Racism and discrimination
Homophobia is the rejection of homosexual people.
Racism is perhaps one of the most common forms of discrimination that exist in the society human, even today. But it is not the only one. Other forms of segregation of the different include:
- Xenophobia. The hatred, fear or contempt for individuals coming from abroad, for their traditions or their way of speaking, in short, the rejection of the coexistence with those who come from other parts of the planet.
- Homophobia. The rejection or hatred of homosexual people or the very existence of homosexual relationships, calling them ominous, perverse, unnatural, etc., to the point of denying them rights or violating the integrity physical or moral of people with said sexual orientation.
- Religious discrimination. It is based on the adherence of a person to one or another religion, as a reason to discriminate or endorse their actions, their rights or their existence. For example, in the wake of terrorist attacks by Islamic fanatic groups in the West, the entire community is often branded religion and its practitioners of terrorists.
Prejudice
A prejudice, on the other hand, is as its name indicates (pre, "before";judgment "Opinion, evaluation"), an opinion, evaluation or position on a topic, a human group or a way of thinking, which is assumed from the start and long before even coming into contact with it.
In other words, prejudiced people have precepts formed regarding ideas, places or people that they do not know, but that they assume as true from the start. It is one of the many forms of ignorance, from which none of us escapes.