Racism involves rejection, discrimination and the
"setting apart" of others based on the colour of
their skin or membership of an ethnic group. The discrimination
that comes with racism maintains power, material, economic,
political and structural inequalities between the groups involved.
Rattansi (1995) found that many negative perceptions of coloured
people originated from the fact that white Europeans regarded
those that were different as "alien" and "wild".
"Black" colour symbolism stemming from the Christian
beliefs of many whites also helped intensify these negative
beliefs. The slave trade and the wealth produced from it further
reinforced the supposed superiority and power of white people
over black people. Miles (1989) reckoned that it was a process
of making sense of or representing the "other" that
was central to the concept of racism.
After the historical development of the sense of "otherness"
(as highlighted by Rattansi), there was an emergence of a
biology of race: obvious differences in appearance, such as
skin colour, were seen as indicators of biological and genetic
differences between groups of people – this influenced
whether a race was regarded as more or less advanced. This
view of genetic differences between races has since been discredited.
One initial approach that focused on an individualistic,
"human nature" tendency towards racism is that of
sociobiology. Several sociobiologists (e.g. Hamilton, 1975;
Reynolds, 1986) have postulated that humans have an in-built,
universal feature that makes us hostile towards others seen
as different (known as ethnocentrism), which results from
natural selection.
This means that people, in wanting their own genes to survive,
will favour those who are related and hold genes in common.
Reynolds has suggested that this tendency still underlies
our actions today, and that this would explain why in multicultural
situations people favour their own ethnic group and are hostile
towards members of other groups.
However, it is difficult to carry this notion over from
the small kin groups mentioned in the original theory to large
modern ethnic groups. It is also thought that this theory
is not adequate in explaining the variability of racism and
the various forms it can take.
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