Racism

PHDEM 702 PHILOSOPHY OF VALUES AND SOCIAL ISSUES

Professor: Dr. NapOLEON Hernandez

Presenter: Marites D. Olea

OBJECTIVES:

 To define racism, racial discrimination and

racial separation.

 To describe the other forms of racism.

 To understand how racism leads to self –

betrayal and self-deception.
 
 To explain the effect of racism on society.

 To analyze the views of UN Convention on the

Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
 WHAT IS RACISM?

 Racism is usually defined as views,

practices and actions reflecting the
belief that humanity is divided into
distinct biological groups called races
 and that members of a certain race
share certain attributes which make
that group as a whole less desirable,
more desirable, inferior, or superior.
 RACISM
 prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism
directed against someone of a different
race based on the belief that one’s own
race is superior.

 Racism is where a person or group of people are

abused physically, emotionally or mentally by
people because of their race, nationality, beliefs,
skin colour and ethnic origin.

People who believe in racism is called racist.

THREE FORMS OF RACISM
1. Individual
racism
- is any attitude or action
whether intentional or
unintentional, conscious
or unconscious, which
subordinates a person or
group because of their
color.
2. Institutional racism
 is any institutional policies,
practices and structures in
governments, businesses,
unions, schools, churches,
courts and law enforcement
entities by which decisions
are made as to unfairly
subordinate persons of color
while allowing other groups to
profit from such actions.

 Example: Housing patterns,

segregated schools,
discriminatory employment
and promotion policies, racial
profiling, inequities in health
care, segregated churches,
and educational curriculum
which ignore/distort the
history of minorities.
3. . Cultural racism
- is the individual and institutional
expression of the superiority of
one group’s cultural heritage over
another (arts, crafts, language,
traditions, beliefs and values).
XENOPHOBIA
- irrational dislike or fear of people
from other countries (Oxford
Dictionaries)

- unreasonable fear and hatred of

strangers or foreigners or of
anything that is strange or foreign.
 (Merriam-Webster)
 SEGREGATIONISM
-is the separation of humans into 
racial groups in daily life. It may
apply to activities such as eating in
a restaurant, drinking from a water
fountain, using a bath room,
attending school, going to the
movies, or in the rental or purchase
of a home.
Segregation was really common in schools.
Black children were not allowed to go to the
same school as the white children.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa parks, are to two
people that protested on the segregation. They both
are a big part of history. They have a lot to do with
why there is not so much racial segregation today.
APARTHEID
- inhumane acts of a
character similar to other 
crimes against humanity
 "committed in the context
of an institutionalized
regime of systematic
oppression 
and domination by one 
racial group over any other
racial group or groups and
committed with the
intention of maintaining
that regime. Apartheid =
“Separateness”

The separation of races

APARTHEID
NO RIGHTS FOR NON-WHITES

 No right to vote.
 No ownership of land.
 No right to move freely.
 No right to free speech.
 No right to protest the
government.
Images of Apartheid

Apartheid separated
the whites from the non-whites
CRIME OF APARTHEID

Sharpville
Massacres
 1960 protest
against Pass Laws

• Police opened fire,

killing over 60
Africans (including
women & children)
in 30 seconds.
SOWETO

 1976 protest
by 20,00
children
against teaching
of Afrikaans in
black schools.

• Riots spread,
over 600 killed.
EXAMPLES OF

RACISM
IN HISTORY
 More than 2,000 years ago, the ancient
Greeks and Romans made slaves of
whom they considered inferior.

 Until the early 1900’s, the Chinese

viewed most foreigners as barbarians.

 From the 1700’s to the early 1900’s,

Europeans believed black-, brown-, and
yellow-skinned people had to be
civilized by the superior whites.
 HITLER AND THE NAZIS
The Nazis considered Jews, Gypsies, Poles
and other Slavic people such as the Russians,
Ukrainians, Czechs and anyone else who was
not an "Aryan" according to the
contemporary Nazi race terminology to be
subhuman. The Nazis rationalized that the
Germans, being a super human race, had a
biological right to displace, eliminate and
enslave inferiors. Some 6 million Jews were
killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. In
the longer term, the Nazis wanted to
exterminate some 30–45 million Slavs.
An improvised camp for Soviet POWs. Between June
1941 and January 1942, the Nazis killed an estimated 2.8
million Red Army POWs, whom they viewed as
"subhuman".
KU KLUX KLAN (KKK)
- a white supremacist
group originating in the
South after the Civil War.
The KKK has been
responsible for countless
acts of terrorism,
violence, and lynching all
intended to intimidate,
murder and oppress
African Americans, Jews,
and other minorities.
 FORMS OF RACIAL DOMINATION

1. Genocide:
The most extreme form of systemic discrimination, by which
deliberate attempts are made by authorities at mass murder
of any national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.
2. Slavery:
A system of social relations in
which one person is the private
property of another and can be
bought and sold on a market.
US slavery was an extreme form
of this:
 Childrencould be taken from
parents and sold
 Slavescould be tortured and killed
with almost no restraint
 Rape of slaves was never a crime.
3. Second Class Citizenship
A system of giving different
categories of people different
citizenship rights on the basis of
some attribute.
In the U.S., “Jim Crow Laws” in
the South after the Civil War
officially gave blacks and whites
different rights. In the North,
different treatment unofficially
conferred different rights.
Jim Crow Laws
Definition: Laws that separated/segregated African Americans and
other non-white racial groups.

Some commonly segregated

spaces as a result of Jim Crow
were:

• schools
• public areas
• transportation
• restrooms
• restaurants
 4. Semi-free labor
A system for
including non-
citizens in a labor
market without
giving them the
rights and
protections of
citizenship.

Miners earning only a few dollars a day and

being forced to be separate from their families
for months or years at a time.
5.Discrimination
Unfair actions
directed against
people based on
their race, gender,
ethnicity,
nationality,
language, faith or
sexual orientation.
Examples of discrimination and prejudice
include:

 Dominant white against black

 Dominant males against females
 Dominant rich against poor
 Dominant old against young ( and vice
versa)
Racial discrimination -
shall mean any distinction,
exclusion, restriction, or
preference based on race,
colour, descent, or national or 
ethnic origin that has the
purpose or effect of nullifying
or impairing the recognition,
enjoyment or exercise, on an
equal footing, of human rights
 and fundamental freedoms in
the political, economic, social,
cultural or any other field of
public life.
 WHY RACISM HAPPEN?
Racism occurs in present society
because:

 Lack of understanding
between other people’s
beliefs, culture and their past
history.

 People aren’t taught to accept

other people and treating
others equally.

 People make fun of other’s:

culture, ethnicity, skin colour,
accent, appearance, etc.
Racism Hurts.
IMPACTS OF RACISM
The impacts of racism
include:

 Suicide
 Long-term Depression
 Insecurity
 Changing their
appearance to fit in
 Abuse
 UNITED NATIONS
INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION ON THE
ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF
RACIAL DISCRIMINATION
 The International Convention on the Elimination of
All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) is a
United Nations convention.

 A third-generation human rights instrument, the

Convention commits its members to the elimination of 
racial discrimination and the promotion of
understanding among all races.

  Controversially, the Convention also requires its

parties to outlaw hate speech and criminalize
membership in racist organizations.
The Convention follows the structure of the 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights , 
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights , and 
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights.

 Part 1 (Articles 1 – 7) commits parties to the elimination of

all forms of racial discrimination and to promoting
understanding among all races.

 Parties are obliged to not discriminate on the basis of race,

not to sponsor or defend racism, and to prohibit racial
discrimination within their jurisdictions. They must also
review their laws and policies to ensure that they do not
discriminate on the basis of race, and commit to amending
or repealing those that do.
 The Convention imposes a specific
commitment on parties to eradicate 
racial segregation and the 
crime of apartheid within their
jurisdictions (Article 3).

 Parties are also required to criminalize the

incitement of racial hatred (Article 4), to
ensure judicial remedies for acts of racial
discrimination (Article 6), and to engage
in public education to promote
understanding and tolerance (Article 7).
Part 2 (Articles 8 – 16) governs reporting and
monitoring of the Convention and the steps taken by
the parties to implement it.

 It establishes the Committee on the Elimination of

Racial Discrimination, and empowers it to make
general recommendations to the UN General
Assembly.

  It also establishes a dispute-resolution mechanism

between parties (Articles 11 – 13), and allows parties
to recognise the competence of the Committee to
hear complaints from individuals about violations of
the rights protected by the Convention (Article 14).
INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR THE ELIMINATION
OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION
UNESCO marks March 21
as the yearly
International Day for the
Elimination of Racial
Discrimination, in
memory of the events
that occurred on March
21, 1960 in Sharpeville,
South Africa, where
police killed student
demonstrators peacefully
protesting against the
apartheid regime.
REFERENCES:
 Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2003.  Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the
Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

 Daniels, Jessie (2009), Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil
Rights, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD.

 Ehrenreich, Eric (2007), The Nazi Ancestral Proof: Genealogy, Racial Science, and the Final
Solution, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN.

 Graves, Joseph. (2004) The Race Myth NY: Dutton

 "International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination". UN

Treaty Series. United Nations. Archived from the original on 2011-08-26. Retrieved 3
February 2011.

 Racism" in R. Schaefer. 2008 Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity and Society. SAGE. p. 1113

 The birth and death of apartheid". BBC News. June 17, 2002

 Wohlgemuth, Bettina (2007-05). Racism in the 21st century: how everybody can make a
difference.
Thank
You