Author: Wilmot Robertson
Source: The Dispossessed Majority (1981), Chapter 2
As the idea is to ideology, so the concept of race is to racism.[1] This leads to the definition of racism—the British call it racialism—as a belief in the race idea. But belief implies some measure of assent, some inward or outward activation of the belief. Racism, accordingly, can be described as the overt or covert expression of the concept of race at one or more levels of human activity— in politics, art, religion, business, community life, and in the privacy of the home.
Racism, which presupposes a common ancestry, is not the same as nationalism, which presupposes a common citizenship. It is usually, but not invariably, associated with such an exalted form of nationalism as patriotism, such extreme forms of nationalism as chauvinism and jingoism, such localized forms as sectionalism, regionalism and provincialism. Racism is present both in the foundation and in the dissolution of empires. It may reinforce nationalism in homogeneous societies and oppose it in multiracial states. In proletarian revolutions and fascist counterrevolutions it may play a far more important role than class.[2]
When races are geographically separated or isolated, racism is likely to be directed externally across and beyond the boundaries of one province, region, or state to another province, region, or state. Where races live side by side, in the same neighborhood or school district, racism is apt to be directed internally to the city block or classroom. Racism of both types is present in most large nations (Japan and China being the most obvious exceptions). Russia, the principal heir of the decomposed Soviet Union, having become much more homogeneous with the breakup of the communist imperium, is an example of a country that practices externalized racism, in contrast to the United States, where owing to the many dissimilar racial elements living cheek by jowl, especially in large metropolitan areas, racism is more internalized.
As far as can be ascertained, practically every nation or society has passed through one or more racist cycles. Despite their endless internecine wars and political and cultural rivalries, the ancient Greeks, according to historian H. A. L. Fisher, "believed themselves to be one in race, language and institutions."[3] They classified all foreigners as barbarians and generally treated them as inferiors, ironically the same status conferred later on the Hellenes by the Romans, who considered them to be corrupt weaklings. Even to this day, many Jews have indulged in the idea of separateness and "Chosenness." Prototypical racial attitudes of the Spanish conquerors and British colonialists infused all their dealings with American Indians and Negroes. The traditionally hostile sentiments of Chinese towards non-Chinese need no elaboration; neither does the white supremacy once endemic in the mind-set of the European empire builders.[4]
Like national defense or the balance of payments, racism is frequently regulated and modified by outside events and influences. Although a homogeneous or a heterogeneous society may display few signs of racism in times of peace, once a neighboring state begins acting aggressively, once a few thousand fellow citizens or racial cousins abroad become the victims of oppression, the dormant racism of the nation or of one or more population groups within the nation may be quickly aroused and assume a dynamic instead of a static character.
Racism, it should also be observed, operates in different orbits in different locations. Consider two American soldiers, one of Scandinavian, the other of Southern Italian origin, guarding a lonely outpost facing the North Koreans or North Vietnamese. At home the first might have called the second a Latin or an Italian when he was trying to be polite, a "wop" or a "greaser" when he was not Now he feels he is in the presence of a fellow white.
Perhaps the first law of racism is that racism begets racism. Paradoxically, so does antiracism, which focuses so much attention on race and implants it so deeply in the public consciousness that the net amount of racism is actually increased. Antiracism, moreover, permits many people to practice racism vicariously by adopting the cause of every race but their own.
In one respect racism is a form of group morale. It provides a protective psychological shell for the most defenseless and defensive peoples. It is also largely responsible for the high aggression quotient of dynamic peoples. In the course of promoting tribalism in both the most retarded and most advanced nations, racism makes the modern industrial state with its sophisticated technology a fearsome opponent. Everything else being equal—manpower, industrial plant, scientific proficiency, and natural resources—a racist state can muster a deadlier military force than a nonracist state. Since families have more fighting spirit than less closely related groups, when war breaks out the tribe or race will often act as the extension of the family. Death comes easier to those who believe they are dying for their people as well as for their country. The soldier with only a modicum of race consciousness may have more difficulty being brave. Conscientious objectors, pacifists, and draft evaders are in short supply in racially oriented societies.
So much of racism remains below the surface in any given historical setting that students of the past seldom give it proper emphasis. Quite possibly, it is the force majeur in human achievement— and human failure. Who can prove the contrary? Who can prove that racism is not a better clue to the rise and fall of civilizations than economics, religion, organic growth and decay, weather, great men, or even fate?
Take the United States with the homogeneous genetic substrate of the Founding Fathers, the racial struggle with the Indians, the racial overtones of the Civil War, the racial differences of the Old and New Immigration, the racial mechanics of big-city and Southern politics, the mounting tempo of minority demands and agitation. Take the United Nations, now coalescing into a conglomeration of racial blocs. Take the twentieth-century revolt of the colored peoples of Asia and Africa against white colonialism. Weigh all this evidence, then wonder at the liberal and conservative historians who grind out their thickly annotated histories which either avoid racism altogether or treat it as a disease rather than as a basic element of human nature.
At present, worldwide movements are afoot to abolish racism. But as indicated by events in the United States and foreign countries, far from being abolished anywhere, it is becoming intensified everywhere.
Instead of attempting to destroy the indestructible, it might be wiser to learn more about man's racial reflexes. Research into the sources of racism might produce effective ways of civilizing it, controlling it, and directing it into more creative and constructive channels.[5] Such knowledge might also aid in distinguishing between the racial behavior that helps build nations and the racial behavior that tears them apart
[1] "An ideology is a complex of ideas or notions which represents itself to the thinker as an absolute truth for the interpretation of the world and his situation within it; it leads the thinker to accomplish an act of self-deception for the purpose of justification, obfuscation, evasion, in some sense or other to his advantage." Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History, trans. Michael Bullock, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1968, p. 132. "Roughly defined, an ideologist is a thinker convinced he has discovered clear solutions to certain human problems or predicaments - solutions capable of expression in general theoretical terms." Times Literary Supplement (London), Jan. 29, 1970, p. 1.
[2] See Chapter 25.
[3] As quoted by T. J. Haarhoff, The Stranger at the Gate, Longmans Green, London, 1938, p. viii.
[4] For a more detailed summary of racist manifestations among the peoples of the world, see Sumner, op. cit, p. 29.
[5] "The application of this principle [racism] has governed the evolution of all advancing societies since soon after the beginning of agriculture." C. D. Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1969, p. 607.