Racism is a belief that distinct human races exist and that one race is superior to another. This was used by Europeans to justify their enslavement of Africans. They maintained racist ideologies and tried to demonstrate that Africans were 'savage' and 'uncivilized' so they could justify treating them inhumanely.
Slavery gave rise to increasingly entrenched racist perspectives. While it is unlikely that racism caused slavery itself, undoubtedly the growth of racism grew from the time of the transatlantic slave trade.
Racism is a belief that distinct human races exist and that one race is superior to another. This was used by Europeans to justify their enslavement of Africans. They maintained racist ideologies and tried to demonstrate that Africans were 'savage' and 'uncivilized' so they could justify treating them inhumanely.
There were probably few organized or institutionalized forms of racism before the 1900s. Many British people would have had limited experiences of interacting with black people. However, there are visual representations of black people dating back to the period of slavery. They tend to be stereotypical and derogatory representations, often cartoon caricatures. The physical features of black people are often exaggerated (to support the European ‘scientific’ definitions of race).
In general, representations of black people during the 1900s tend to show cheerful, happy and hardworking Africans, used mainly to promote colonial produce. Golliwogs, with their stereotypically crude features, were popular childhood toys. They were used as a marketing tool on Robertson's jams and marmalades from 1910 and were only dropped in 2001.
These various stereotypes have become so ingrained that they survived long after slavery and helped perpetuate racism and, in the USA, official segregation. Many of these stereotypes are still familiar today.
Notable black people who defied the stereotypes, such as the actor Paul Robeson, as well as many musicians and sports stars still encountered racism in their work and lives. The African American civil rights movement (1896-1968), with its well known figureheads such as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, was a legacy of slavery and a powerful force finally bringing an end to racial segregation in America.
Apartheid in South Africa
To speak of South Africa is to address racism in the most concrete form it has taken since Nazi Germany. It is a history of victorious struggle too, thanks to decades of selfless organizing by tens of thousands of militants and the courage of the South African people – supported by untold numbers in the rest of the world, including NZ – the forces of racism have been defeated.
Below is the structure of population against social services during apartheid regime in south Africa;
But the shocking state of South Africa at present is in no way an argument for the return of apartheid, as some right wingers insinuate. It is true that the black liberation governments in Africa have nowhere managed to change the poverty, hunger and illiteracy that has characterized the continent since European colonialism but all this shows is that these governments have been forced to continue Africa’s subordination in the world economy. Apartheid was no golden age, nor was direct British imperialism.
While the prison rate stands at about 341 per 100,000 in 2007, under apartheid (in 1981-2) it stood at 585, and the rate for blacks was 1066 per 100,000. But that is just the beginning.
Apartheid ideologists aimed to eliminate black South Africans by creating Bantustans – supposedly independent homelands ruled by puppet governments where all Africans would theoretically reside, although they would still work in white South Africa’s factories, farms and homes.
As UK journalist Bernard Levin wrote in the 1970s
“Every action in the field of race relations taken by the South African government for at least 20 years has been designed to increase the domination of the vast majority of the population by the white minority. The majority have been progressively stripped, by the white minority, of every fundamental right, every dignity, every vestige of decent treatment.
They may not live where they choose; they may not strike; they may not criticise their conditions; they may not marry whom they please; they may not mingle with people of other races; they may not engage in any political activity… they may not travel where they wish; they may have their employment cancelled without notice or reason, by officials; they may be arbitrarily declared to be of whatever race officials decide they are; they have no unqualified right to have their children living with them; the men have no right to have their wives living with them; and in short – I could go on for ten times as long with similar examples – their subjection to the white minority, which lives in comfort on their labour, is complete and is to remain so as long as the minority has the power to enforce it.
The main question is ; Is Racism and its worst forms really over?
