Racial Prejudice: A Social Phenomenon

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, racism is defined as 'the belief that all members of a certain race possess characteristics specific to that race especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races'. The recent sequencing of the human genome has proven the interrelatedness of all people making the race a biological fiction yet it still has significant social consequences in human societies. While many people would assume that racism stems from historical atrocities, such as slavery and cultural oppression ( the slave trade, colonialism, massacres) these are only proximate causes. The ultimate causes of racism, result from economic need, xenophobia, and a need to justify existing hierarchies or castes. Looking at both proximate and ultimate causes will give human societies a better chance of overcoming racism and oppression.

According to the American Anthropology Association, the race has no biological reality but has social implications that humanity must be aware of. 94 % of human genetic variation occurs within racial categories making races differ by only 6% of their genetic code ("AAA Statement on "Race"). Furthermore, no single gene or gene cluster can account for the differences between defined racial categories("AAA Statement on "Race"). For racism to be established people need to be convinced of their genetic and ancestral separateness from one another; when there is no support for this idea, racism cannot easily survive. It is the belief in separate races that propagates the idea that some races are better than others. This leads to historical atrocities such as colonialism, slavery, and genocide that in turn feeds the system of oppression.

Incidents of oppression in history fuel racism by normalizing hierarchical relationships between groups of people (Fields 106). When a hierarchy becomes habitual as in the daily interactions between slaves and masters, noblemen and peasants, kings and subjects and colonizers and indigenous people, it is seen as natural and therefore normal(Fields 106). In the United States, the institution of slavery normalized the hierarchy between African Americans and European Americans (Fields 106-107). Today this justification seems circular since the bonds of slavery prevented African Americans from advancing to higher levels of society, yet it was the idea that African-American could not advance that justified this 'peculiar institution'. The historical atrocities fueled the racial hierarchy (making it persist for decades after the Civil War) but ultimately racism was and is caused by a need for dominant groups of people to maintain the status quo.

Colonialism is an institution fueled by economic expansion and the resulting need for lands, labor and resources for a market economy. To take advantage of resources the people dependent on the lands must be eliminated through genocide, paternalism and conversion. Genocide obviously eliminates native peoples physically; paternalism justifies the taking of lands by treating natives as children who cannot take care of themselves, the end game to assimilate native peoples into the existing social hierarchy. To discredit non-European lifestyles scientific racism was employed to provide data to prove the evolutionary backwardness of non-white peoples("AAA Statement on "Race"). While science no longer supports the racial divisions and stratification of humanity the existing social fabric and its associated stereotypes still support it.

Xenophobia, ignorance of other cultures and ethnocentrism are all the driving forces that evolve into racism. The fear of differences and unwillingness to learn about others plus the economic necessities of imperialism dictate that one social group must take over another. Racism becomes an afterthought in these conflicts; the winning side needs to justify their position morally and politically. Race becomes a fluid definition that can be applied in any conflict (Haney Lopez 197). For slaves in the United States, it became easy to see black skin as a defect. In other conflicts, the United States has ascribed racial characteristics to their foes. For example in the early 1800s Americans ascribed to Latin Americans both a nationality and a race (Haney Lopez 197 ). Thus, for example, a Mexican could be considered both Mexican and black. By the 1840s however, propaganda from the war for Texan Independence and for the Mexican cession ascribed Mexican as a race and characterized Mexicans as slothful, unintelligent and violent(Haney Lopez 198). In as little as four decades the economic expansion of the United States and resulting conflict led to a completely different definition of Mexican(Haney Lopez 198). As a result law in California called the Greaser Acts were passed that specifically targeted people of Spanish and Indian ancestry(Haney Lopez 198). This was to subjugate the previous population and make way for Euro-Americans from the United States.

The causes of racism are complex and intertwined. First xenophobia and ethnocentricism lead to hostility between people of different cultures and physical appearances. The need for markets and the development of capitalism dictated that new resources be exploited. The losing peoples in resulting conflicts are then dehumanized or destroyed and subjugated to the hierarchy that the dominant groups create. While modern societies try to overcome this prejudice and dismantle the status quo, they must also abandon the idea that races are biologically real. We need to let go of the idea of skin color as separateness.

Works Cited

"AAA Statement on "Race"." AAA Statement on "Race". N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2013. <http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm

Delgado, Richard, Jean Stefancic, and Ian Haney Lopez. "The Social Construction of Race ." Critical race theory: the cutting edge. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000. 191-203. Print.

Fields, Barbara Jeanne. "Slavery Race and Ideology in the United States." New Left Review May. - Jun. 1990: 95-118. Print.