The relationship between racism and universalism were symbiotic from the very beginning. In order to define the universal human being as rational – an imperative of Enlightenment – it was necessary to define who could not be viewed as such. Resultant, this led to the categori-zation of people into the ‘superior’ and the ‘inferior’, the differentiation upon which racism is built. The interdependence of racism and universalism stems from the fact that
“(…) the idea of universal humanity was constructed in the image of the white European, against the non-European, the blacks in the colonies and the internal others, [and that is why] the appli-cation of the essence of humanity, as it was defined by European thinkers, to all men and women was impossible from the outset. It is simply not possible for those who do not comply with a defini-tion of humanity – rationality, individuality, white aesthetics – to be considered (fully) human.” (Lentin & Lentin, 2006:3). The feeling that racism is no longer an issue is pervasive in post-colonial societies. Euphe-misms such as ‘intolerance’ or ‘discrimination’ or ‘the challenges of living with diversity’ have increasingly replaced and banned racism to the past (Lentin & Lentin, 2006). This per-suasion of being post-racist is rooted in the logic of the modern nation state giving rise to “(…) a deep discomfort about admitting racism, in Europe in particular, because common wis-dom, fed by national and supranational policy, tells us that racism opposes everything that we be-lieve in as citizens of democratic, “civilized” modern states; at least the virulent racism we asso-ciate with ghettos and genocide.” (Lentin & Lentin, 2006:1) Contemporary western, post-colonial societies are obsessed by the idea that their constitutive nature is marked by tolerance and democracy and thus certainly non-racialism or even anti-racism (Lentin, 2014). In reality, today’s racism goes well beyond the everyday discrimina-tion that second and third generation descendants of immigrants encounter. It is a racism orig-inating in Europe’s history of the past few centuries, the twentieth century in particular. The fact that it is impossible to disentangle the perpetuation of racism from the institutions and actions of the state makes it so difficult to acknowledge it, to talk about it (Lentin & Lentin, 2006). The official histories wrongly portray racism as a bloody ‘imperfection’ of the twenti-eth century rather than, how other authors (Lentin & Lentin, 2006; Goldberg, 2002; Bauman, 1989) have argued, as inseparable, indeed a product of the project modernity. For Zygmunt Bauman (2001) it is modernity …show more content…
The first function was to determine the conflicts between the different European states, each considered as unifying one ‘race’ of people within them. The second, more dura-ble function was to distinguish between different groups of people both within and between societies, creating hierarchies that ultimately placed the Europeans at the top. By the begin-ning of the twentieth century racism took on two dimensions, an external and an internal one that were mutually complementary. Externally, racism served to explain the differences be-tween Europeans and the ‘natives’ in the colonies. It served to justify both direct domination of the colonized and the European civilizing missions in the colonies. Internally racism served to define the threat within the state associated with the racially different (Lentin & Lentin, 2006; Goldberg, 2002). I will now turn towards how exactly racism evolved historically under European colonial domination and
“(…) the idea of universal humanity was constructed in the image of the white European, against the non-European, the blacks in the colonies and the internal others, [and that is why] the appli-cation of the essence of humanity, as it was defined by European thinkers, to all men and women was impossible from the outset. It is simply not possible for those who do not comply with a defini-tion of humanity – rationality, individuality, white aesthetics – to be considered (fully) human.” (Lentin & Lentin, 2006:3). The feeling that racism is no longer an issue is pervasive in post-colonial societies. Euphe-misms such as ‘intolerance’ or ‘discrimination’ or ‘the challenges of living with diversity’ have increasingly replaced and banned racism to the past (Lentin & Lentin, 2006). This per-suasion of being post-racist is rooted in the logic of the modern nation state giving rise to “(…) a deep discomfort about admitting racism, in Europe in particular, because common wis-dom, fed by national and supranational policy, tells us that racism opposes everything that we be-lieve in as citizens of democratic, “civilized” modern states; at least the virulent racism we asso-ciate with ghettos and genocide.” (Lentin & Lentin, 2006:1) Contemporary western, post-colonial societies are obsessed by the idea that their constitutive nature is marked by tolerance and democracy and thus certainly non-racialism or even anti-racism (Lentin, 2014). In reality, today’s racism goes well beyond the everyday discrimina-tion that second and third generation descendants of immigrants encounter. It is a racism orig-inating in Europe’s history of the past few centuries, the twentieth century in particular. The fact that it is impossible to disentangle the perpetuation of racism from the institutions and actions of the state makes it so difficult to acknowledge it, to talk about it (Lentin & Lentin, 2006). The official histories wrongly portray racism as a bloody ‘imperfection’ of the twenti-eth century rather than, how other authors (Lentin & Lentin, 2006; Goldberg, 2002; Bauman, 1989) have argued, as inseparable, indeed a product of the project modernity. For Zygmunt Bauman (2001) it is modernity …show more content…
The first function was to determine the conflicts between the different European states, each considered as unifying one ‘race’ of people within them. The second, more dura-ble function was to distinguish between different groups of people both within and between societies, creating hierarchies that ultimately placed the Europeans at the top. By the begin-ning of the twentieth century racism took on two dimensions, an external and an internal one that were mutually complementary. Externally, racism served to explain the differences be-tween Europeans and the ‘natives’ in the colonies. It served to justify both direct domination of the colonized and the European civilizing missions in the colonies. Internally racism served to define the threat within the state associated with the racially different (Lentin & Lentin, 2006; Goldberg, 2002). I will now turn towards how exactly racism evolved historically under European colonial domination and