Appiah History of Hatred
Overall, people agree that certain things in the past were racist, because they involve
judgements about other places or times. There is, however, little agreement on what racism
in the US looks like today. One reason for this is that people have a different understanding
of the term ‘racism’. On top of this, it is not clear that most of us share a view about why it is
wrong.
Historian George M. Fredrickson discusses the history of racism in his book Racism: A Short
History. In his introduction Fredrickson states that his aim is 'to present in a concise fashion
the story of racism's rise and decline from the Middle Ages to the present.' He acknowledges
that this requires him to have a conception of racism. If we all agreed on what racism was,
one would not need a theory to find examples of it in the past. This is further complicated by
the relative novelty of the term ‘racism’ itself, which only first appeared in the 1930s. This
does not mean that racism itself is relatively new. Fredrickson proposes that racism
combines an attitude or set of beliefs with a set of practices, institutions and structures. The
attitude in question involves treating ethnic or cultural differences as innate and
unchangeable.
In his book Fredrickson focusses on Western racism only, because he says it has a wider
impact than any comparable ideology. Besides this, he believes that racism received its
fullest theoretical elaboration in the West in societies where it offended against a growing
conviction that all men are created equal. Fredrickson argues that Western racism has two
strands, antisemitism and white supremacism, and that antisemitism came first. What is
distinctive about racism in the West according to Fredrickson is the development of a full-
scale systematic ideology to explain why others deserved bad treatment.
The author thinks Fredrickson’s analysis is potentially misleading in two ways:
● His just insistence on the role of racism as an attempt to rationalize abuses might
lead some readers to conclude that the real harm is done by whatever causes people
to abuse outsiders in the first place.
● His insistence that racism must involve both difference and power. It is true that
racism developed in the West that way. But once the ideology developed, it colonized
minds, many of which are now far from the levers of power. An individual racist attack
does not need to be part of a current pattern of attempts at group domination. While
racist ideology is characteristic of the hostility against black and Jewish people, the
deep feelings of revulsion, hostility or hatred that many racist feel are at least as
important in the everyday life of racism.
Essed Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Theory
A New Approach to the Study of Racism
This study provides a compact integration of concepts originating from different disciplines. It
presents an analysis of cross-cultural empirical data that were instrumental in the
development of a theory of everyday racism. The impetus for this study emerged from the
need to make visible the lived experience of racism and to analyze black perceptions about
racism in everyday life. Racism is defined as inherent in culture and social order. It is argued
in this study that racism is more than structure and ideology. As a process it is routinely
created and reinforced through everyday practices. The concept of everyday racism links
ideological dimensions of racism with daily attitudes and interprets the reproduction of
racism in terms of the experience of it in everyday life. Through a detailed theoretical
analysis, this study articulates new sets of meanings in the concept of everyday racism. The
author aims to demonstrate that the concept of everyday racism has a more general
,relevance in race relations today. She will show that it can be relevantly applied to the
analysis of racism both in the US and the Netherlands.
Everyday Racism, Experiences and Accounts
The distinction between racism and everyday racism is that the latter involves only
systematic, recurrent, familiar practices. Because everyday racism is infused into familiar
practices, it involves socialized attitudes and behavior. Its systematic nature indicates that
everyday racism includes cumulative instantiation. The notion of everyday racism is defined
in terms of practices prevalent in a given system. Experience is a central concept in this
study. The author argues that reconstructions of experiences provide the best basis for the
analysis of the simultaneous impact of racism in different sites and in different social
relations.
Focusing on Black Women
The author analyses the general concept of racism based only the experiences of black
women. This is to make a black female point of view more explicit in the general field of race
and ethnic relations.
Social-Political Context: The Denial of Racism
One common factor of racism in the US and the Netherlands is the denial of racism. Today,
white people condemn more blatant forms of racism and are often motivated to maintain
nondiscriminating self-concepts. Few, however, actively challenge the current consensus on
race as it is expressed in increasingly covert forms of racism merged with apparently
nonracial issues. The Dutch more actively pursue ideals of tolerance than white people in
the US. Is this in contradiction to evidence of racism? We must consider that in the
Netherlands racism operates more as cultural oppression than in the US. The notion of
tolerance, with which the Netherlands is associated, is problematic when applied to relations
of dominance. This study will show that Dutch racism operates through the discourse of
tolerance. The dominant group assumes that Dutch norms and values are superior and not
subject to change. This leads to all kinds of strategies to manage the presence of Blacks and
other immigrants in society through cultural control. Thus the discourse of tolerance
conceals the emptiness of the promise of cultural pluralism.
Not only is racism denied in both countries, the current ideological climate allows the press
and academics to openly attack black people who fight against racism. This legitimizes and
reinforces indifference to racial oppression and tolerance for racism among the dominant
group.
Theoretical Background
The approach and relevance of this study cannot be fully understood without mentioning
some major shortcomings of the sociology of race and ethnic relations:
● Racial and ethnic prejudice has been studied largely from a white point of view.
● There are several limitations to the insights into racism developed in the sociology of
race and ethnic relations. Many studies that implemented racial oppression as
institutional discrimination are problematic because they ignored the role of ideology
in the structuring of discrimination.
● Most studies also have the usual problems of macrosociology. Manifestations of
contemporary racism have not been studied in detail in a systematic, theoretical and
analytical way.
,There are four areas of theoretical debate in which this study of everyday racism must be
placed:
● Structural approaches to racism and questions of power and oppression.
● (Black) women’s studies and a focus on the impact of gender (and class) on forms
and experiences of racism.
● The meaning of social reality and relations between macro structures and micro
processes.
● Questions of experience and social cognition.
Stuurman François Bernier and the Invention of Racial Classification
It is not clear what the intellectual and political origins are of modern ‘scientific’ racism. In this
article the author will examine what was probably the first attempt at a racial classification of
the world’s population, framed by the 17th century French physician François Bernier.
Bernier’s new division of the earth can be situated at the ‘beginning’ of the long and complex
intellectual trajectory of modern racial thought. Bernier did not, however, invent a full-blown
racial theory of history. The idea of giving a physico-biological notion of race foundationalist
status in the classification of the human species was a significant intellectual innovation,
paving the way for the further elaboration of race as a concept in 18th century natural
history. Bernier’s classification also marked a rupture with the explanation of human variety
in terms of a biblical genealogy. Bernier’s introduction of a racial classification of mankind
cannot be regarded as a logical intellectual consequence of post-Columbian European
expansion. Bernier’s classification calls for an explanation in terms of intellectual history.
Bernier’s Classification of Humanity
Bernier distinguishes four ‘races’: the first race, the African negroes, the East and Northeast
Asian race and the Lapps. The first race comprises Europe, North Africa, the Middle East,
India, a part of Southeast Asia and the native population of the Americas. He does not
describe any physical characteristics in detail. He does acknowledge the importance of
‘whiteness’ (ex. the darker complexion of Middle Eastern people is due to sun exposure), but
this first race is more a cultural construct. Bernier has an undefined boundary line between
‘us’ and ‘them’. Through his voyages Bernier was well acquainted with the parts of the world
whose peoples belonged to this first race. His discussion of the Lapps is marked by a hostile
tone and betrays an unfamiliarity that borders on ignorance. For his description of the African
‘negroes’ he relies mostly on what he has observed at slave markets in the Islamic world.
According to him the blackness of their skin is according to genetics. The ‘third species’ of
Northeast Asia are ‘really white’ according to Bernier, but they differ too much in physical
features to be part of the first race.
The second part of Bernier’s discussion of race is entirely consecrated to ‘the beauty of the
women’ in different parts of the world. This echoes the preoccupation with gender found in
virtually all travel relation. Moreover, by focusing on the aesthetics of the female body to the
exclusion of all other criteria, the masculine, sexualized gaze naturally fits within the
discourse on race which posits physical differences as the ultimate foundation of a ‘new
division of the earth’. It is in his discussion of female beauty that Bernier most emphatically
posits his racialist explanation, arguing for the beauty of some over others on account of
physical characteristics.
A Philosophical Traveller
, Bernier’s discourse on Mughal India wavers between Eurocentric arrogance and a
willingness to accept the Indians, or at least the ruling Mughal elite, as partners on a basis of
equality. In his philosophical writings he acclaimed the intellectual subtlety of the Indians and
their taste for scientific reasoning. He had nothing but contempt, on the other hand, for the
religion and philosophy of the Hindus and Muslims. Bernier’s discourse on Hindu ‘idolatry’ is
no straightforward affirmation of European superiority, however. He does see similarities in
European and Indian superstition. The French and Indians are both portrayed as ignorant
and superstitious, but in France there existed a countervailing enlightenment in the
intellectual elite that was lacking in the Indian case. In Europe, therefore, there was hope of
enlightenment; in Asia there was not. In the field of political, military, economic and political
organization in the Mughal Empire Bernier has an entirely negative opinion.
Race plays no role in the construction of the Europe/India comparison. Bernier does pay
some attention to the racial hierarchy within the Mughal empire, however. Here whiteness
appears as a mark of superiority within Indian society.
A Gassendist Anthropology
Bernier was closely associated with the philosopher Pierre Gassendi. In Gassendist
philosophy, as in Platonism and Cartesianism, the basic dualism of mind and matter was
upheld, but the biological side of man loomed larger than in Cartesianism. Gassendi
maintained that there were important similarities between man and animals, despite the lack
of a rational soul in the latter. What man shared with animals was the anima, the sensitive
soul which functioned as the organizing principle of the body. Bernier insisted on the
irreducibly non-material nature of the human mind. Furthermore, he sought to maintain a
clear distinction between ‘the soul of man and that of the other animals’.
Bernier followed Gassendi’s theory that there are two souls in man, one sensitive and non-
rational, the other spiritual and rational. The properties of the sensitive soul are hereditary,
but the rational soul is infused by God. This creates the possibility of differing degrees of
rationality. Bernier accepts the legitimacy of natural slavery on these grounds. He
considered black Africans ‘natural slaves’ and speaks of certain tribes which ‘retain less
humanity’. Bernier does, however, believe in the unity of the human species.
From Sacred History to Natural History
Until the late 17th century the European debate about the classification of humanity was
conducted within a biblical framework. Whatever the scientific merits of the various migration
theories put forward to account for the origin of the Americans, their ultimate purpose
remained the insertion of America in the Old-Testament version of history. In all his writings,
Bernier displays a notable lack of interest in the whole issue of sacred history.
Ancient and Modern Ideas about Race
The case of Bernier is of interest because he stands at the transition point between the old
and the new discourse on race. Bernier launched the idea of a division of humanity into
races, but his races are peculiar constructs with ill-defined contours and boundaries.
Bernier's races are not the clear-cut biological concepts of eighteenth-century natural
history, and yet his classificatory scheme is something more than the sum of existing
prejudices. In the end, it is not so much the specific description of the different 'races', but
rather the very act of a natural-historical classification of mankind that constitutes the crucial
novelty of Bernier's representation of humanity.
