Origin of racism¹

First recorded in 1900–05; from French racisme; race ², -ism

Related Words

• apartheid 
• bias 
• bigotry 
• discrimination 
• segregation 
• unfairness 

When To Use

What is racism?

Racism is most commonly used to name a form of prejudice in which a person believes in the superiority of what they consider to be their own “race” over others. This most often takes the form of believing that those with other skin colors—especially darker skin colors—are inferior physically, intellectually, morally, and/or culturally, and mistreating and discriminating against them because of this. Such a belief typically promotes the notion that white people are “the default”—that whiteness is “normal” and that people with other appearances are the ones who are “different” (and “inferior”).The word racism is also used to mean a system of oppression based on this kind of prejudice that is thought to be embedded into the fabric of society and its institutions, resulting in ongoing mistreatment and injustice in many, many forms. This is often called systemic racism, institutional racism, or structural racism. These terms imply that such racism is upheld by laws, policies, traditions, and institutions—and the people who keep them in place.When used in this way, racism typically refers to a system that has oppressed people of color all over the world throughout history. Such a system is often thought to operate through white people using the advantages that the system gives them (often called white privilege) to maintain their supremacy over people of color (often called white supremacy). Particularly in the U.S., it’s used to refer to a system that has historically oppressed and continues to oppress Black people, Native (also called Indigenous) Americans, and other people of color, including Latinx, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Australian Aboriginal and other Oceanic peoples.Other forms of bigotry, intolerance, and xenophobia, such as anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, are often considered to be rooted in racism.The word racist can be used as a noun meaning a racist person or as an adjective meaning “of or promoting racism,” as in racist ideology or racist comments.What is race?To fully define racism, we have to define race. Throughout history, the word race has commonly been used to refer to a classification of humans based on various physical characteristics, especially skin color, facial form, and eye shape. But sorting people into such races is truly arbitrary—they’re not based on meaningful scientific differences (like, for example, those used to determine legitimate scientific classifications such as species and genus). Although the obsession with the difference in people’s skin color is one of the foundations of racism, skin color is in fact not even a reliable indicator of how genetically different or similar people are. (Difference in skin color is due to having differing levels of a pigment, called melanin, in the skin. Melanin is also a factor in hair color.)Today, race is best understood as a socially constructed category of identification based on physical characteristics, ancestry, historical affiliation, or shared culture. Many people identify as a member of a particular race based on one or more of these factors, and doing so helps members of oppressed groups to form communities.Still, the insidious idea that race determines a person’s behavior is strong and pervasive. Racism often refers to the way that racists and racist institutions use this concept to continue to sort and stereotype people, perpetuating racism and making it widespread on both an individual and systemic level.