Introduction
The climax in the history of racism came in the 20th century with the rise and fall of overtly
racist regimes, like the one in the southern states of the US. The moral revulsion of people
against the actions of the nazi’s, reinforced by scientific studies to discredit eugenics,
discredited scientific racism. Explicit racism came under attack by the newly decolonized
nations of Africa and Asia. The racist regime in South Africa, however, survived the Second
World War and the Cold War. The defeat of the mentioned regimes suggests that regimes
based on biological or cultural essentialist racism are a thing of the past. Discrimination by
institutions and individuals against those perceived as racially different can still exist without
the support of the state and the law, however. The use of cultural differences against
newcomers from the Third World in several European countries has led to allegations of a
new ‘cultural racism’. There is a gray area between racism and ‘culturalism’. Culture can be
reified and essentialized to the point where it becomes the functional equivalent of race.
The aim of this book is to present the story of racism’s rise and decline from the Middle Ages
to the present. To achieve this, the author has defined ‘racism’ more precise than
ethnocentric dislike/distrust of the Other. Racism is more than theorizing about human
differences or thinking badly of a group over which one has no control. It either directly
sustains or proposes to establish a racial order that is believed to reflect the laws of nature.
The authors conception of racism has two components:
● Difference: racism originates from a mindset that regards ‘them’ as different from ‘us’
in ways that are unbridgeable.
● Power: the sense of difference provides a motive for using the power advantage to
treat the ethnoracial Other in ways that we would regard as cruel if applied to
members of our own group.
In this book the author will focus on racism in Europe and its colonial extensions since the
fifteenth century.
Ch1 Religion and the Invention of Racism
Scholars have not detected a true equivalent to the concept of ‘race’ in the ancient world of
the Greeks, Romans and early Christians. There was ethnic prejudice, however. The refusal
of dispersed Jews to accept the religious and cultural hegemony of the empires within which
they resided sometimes aroused hostility against them. Jews were seen as collectively and
hereditarily responsible for the death of Jesus, which created an incentive for persecution.
The author does not define this as racism, however, because the ‘curse’ did not fall on
individual Jews in such a way that they could never be absolved of it. Jewish people could
convert to Christianity, which means that the hereditary sin was not an insurmountable
source of difference. Anti-Judaism became antisemitism whenever it turned into a hatred
that made getting rid of Jewish people preferable to their conversion, and antisemitism
became racism when the belief took hold that Jews were intrinsically evil rather than merely
having false beliefs.
● In the 11th and 12th centuries the massacres of Jews started with the Crusades,
which stimulated pogroms.
● In the 12th and 13th centuries the attitudes of European Christians towards Jews
became more hostile in ways that laid a foundation for the racism that later
developed. It was the spiritual threat that Jews allegedly represented that inspired
most of the violence against them.
● By the 13th and 14th centuries christians were demonizing Jews, for example by
using the doctrine of transubstantiation and blood libels. In popular mythology and
The climax in the history of racism came in the 20th century with the rise and fall of overtly
racist regimes, like the one in the southern states of the US. The moral revulsion of people
against the actions of the nazi’s, reinforced by scientific studies to discredit eugenics,
discredited scientific racism. Explicit racism came under attack by the newly decolonized
nations of Africa and Asia. The racist regime in South Africa, however, survived the Second
World War and the Cold War. The defeat of the mentioned regimes suggests that regimes
based on biological or cultural essentialist racism are a thing of the past. Discrimination by
institutions and individuals against those perceived as racially different can still exist without
the support of the state and the law, however. The use of cultural differences against
newcomers from the Third World in several European countries has led to allegations of a
new ‘cultural racism’. There is a gray area between racism and ‘culturalism’. Culture can be
reified and essentialized to the point where it becomes the functional equivalent of race.
The aim of this book is to present the story of racism’s rise and decline from the Middle Ages
to the present. To achieve this, the author has defined ‘racism’ more precise than
ethnocentric dislike/distrust of the Other. Racism is more than theorizing about human
differences or thinking badly of a group over which one has no control. It either directly
sustains or proposes to establish a racial order that is believed to reflect the laws of nature.
The authors conception of racism has two components:
● Difference: racism originates from a mindset that regards ‘them’ as different from ‘us’
in ways that are unbridgeable.
● Power: the sense of difference provides a motive for using the power advantage to
treat the ethnoracial Other in ways that we would regard as cruel if applied to
members of our own group.
In this book the author will focus on racism in Europe and its colonial extensions since the
fifteenth century.
Ch1 Religion and the Invention of Racism
Scholars have not detected a true equivalent to the concept of ‘race’ in the ancient world of
the Greeks, Romans and early Christians. There was ethnic prejudice, however. The refusal
of dispersed Jews to accept the religious and cultural hegemony of the empires within which
they resided sometimes aroused hostility against them. Jews were seen as collectively and
hereditarily responsible for the death of Jesus, which created an incentive for persecution.
The author does not define this as racism, however, because the ‘curse’ did not fall on
individual Jews in such a way that they could never be absolved of it. Jewish people could
convert to Christianity, which means that the hereditary sin was not an insurmountable
source of difference. Anti-Judaism became antisemitism whenever it turned into a hatred
that made getting rid of Jewish people preferable to their conversion, and antisemitism
became racism when the belief took hold that Jews were intrinsically evil rather than merely
having false beliefs.
● In the 11th and 12th centuries the massacres of Jews started with the Crusades,
which stimulated pogroms.
● In the 12th and 13th centuries the attitudes of European Christians towards Jews
became more hostile in ways that laid a foundation for the racism that later
developed. It was the spiritual threat that Jews allegedly represented that inspired
most of the violence against them.
● By the 13th and 14th centuries christians were demonizing Jews, for example by
using the doctrine of transubstantiation and blood libels. In popular mythology and
