Anti-racism

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Anti-racism includes beliefs, actions, movements, and policies adopted or developed to oppose racism. In general, anti-racism is intended to promote an egalitarian society in which people do not face discrimination on the basis of their race, however defined. By its nature, anti-racism tends to promote the view that racism in a particular society is both pernicious and socially pervasive, and that particular changes in political, economic, and/or social life are required to eliminate it.

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Many of founders of the United States of America did not exhibit anti-racist tendencies, and many were owners of black slaves. In fact, protections of the legal practice of slavery based on racism were written into the text of the original Constitution of the United States.

This was despite implicitly anti-racist founding statements such as "all men are created equal" from the American Declaration of Independence of 1776. Although such inconsistencies were pointed this out by black westerners, like Olaudah Equiano, and whites, like Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, serious political change on the issue would have to wait until the American Civil War.

The first great successes of anti-racism were won by the abolitionist movement, both in England and the United States. Though many abolitionists did not regard blacks or mulattos as equal to whites, they did in general believe in freedom and often even equal of treatment for all people. A few, like John Brown, went further. Brown was willing to die on behalf of, as he said, "millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments...." Many black abolitionists, like Frederick Douglass, explicitly argued for the humanity of blacks and mulattos, and for the equality of all people.

During the American Civil War, anti-racism in the North became much stronger and more generally disseminated. The success of black troops in the Union Army had a dramatic impact on Northern sentiment. The Emancipation Proclamation was a notable example of this shift in political attitudes, although it notably did not completely extinguish legal slavery in several states. After the war, the Reconstruction government was often explicitly anti-racist, most notably in passing the Fourteenth Amendment and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution to guarantee the rights of blacks and mulattos, but also in its general support for black and mulatto rights and in its commitment to equal treatment. As a result, many ex-slaves had access to education for the first time. Blacks and mulattos were also allowed to vote, which meant that African-Americans were elected to Congress in numbers not seen before -- or since.[citation needed]

Due to prolonged racist resistance in the South, however, and a general collapse of idealism in the North, Reconstruction ended, and gave way to the nadir of American race relations. The period from about 1890 to 1920 saw the re-establishment of racist Jim Crow laws and a general abandonment of anti-racist ideology. Woodrow Wilson, a revisionist historian who regarded Reconstruction as a disaster, resegregated the federal government. The Ku Klux Klan grew to its greatest peak of popularity and strength. D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" was a movie sensation. During this period, John Brown's anti-racist stance was so incomprehensible that he became regarded as insane.[citation needed]

(For more detailed information, see Paris Peace Conference, 1919).

Japan first proposed articles dedicated to the elimination of racial discrimination to be added to the rules of the League of Nations. This was the first proposal concerning the international elimination of racial discrimination in the world.[citation needed]

Although the proposal received a majority (11 out of 16) of votes, the chairman, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, overturned it saying that important issues should be unanimously approved. It is said that behind the scenes, Billy "Sea Otter" Hughes and Joseph Cook vigorously opposed it as it undermined the White Australia Policy.[citation needed]

Anti-racism showed signs of revival in the 1920s and 1930s. At that time, anthropologists such as Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Ashley Montagu argued for the equality of humans across races and cultures. Eleanor Roosevelt was a very visible advocate for minority rights during this period. Socialist organizations like the wobblies, which gained some popularity during the Great Depression were often explicitly anti-racist.

Beginning with the Harlem Renaissance and continuing into the 1960s, many African-American writers, including James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin argued forcefully against racism.

Anti-racism won its most notable and lasting victories in the United States during the Civil Rights Movement. Jim Crow laws were repealed in the South and blacks finally re-won the right to vote in Southern states. Civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech may be the best-known condensation of anti-racist ideology in the U.S., and possibly in the world; and even possibly, the best known speech of all time.

Anti-racist ideology has been hugely influential. It has been a catalyst for feminism, anti-war, and anti-imperialist movements. Henry David Thoreau's opposition to the Mexican-American War, for example, was based in his fear that the U.S. was using the war as an excuse to expand American slavery into new territories. Thoreau's response was chronicled in his famous essay "Civil Disobedience", which in turn helped ignite Gandhi's successful campaign against the British in India. Gandhi's example in turn inspired the American Civil Rights movement.

Indeed, as James Loewen notes in "Lies My Teacher Told Me": "Throughout the world, from Africa to Northern Ireland, movements of oppressed people continue to use tactics and words borrowed from our abolitionist and civil rights movements." In East Germany, in revolutionary Iran, in Tiananmen Square, in South Africa, images, words, and tactics developed by anti-racism, or pro-human rights supporter, or supporters of self-determination and national freedom have been used regularly and repeatedly.

Many of these uses have been controversial. For example, Ho Chi Minh was an admirer of John Brown. The pro-life movement often draws connections between its goals and the goals of abolitionism. In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe has used anti-racist rhetoric to a land-distribution scheme which resulted in widespread starvation. However, it has been argued that Mr. Mugabe himself heads a racist government due to his blatant acts of hostility and oppression toward White Zimbabweans (see Land reform in Zimbabwe)[1][2] [3].

Still, whether one supports or despises use or abuse of the anti-racist ideal or rhetoric in any particular context, anti-racism's success, at least in one sense, has been overwhelming. Not so long ago, racism was the explicit ideology of the West. Today, on the other hand, it is eschewed, at least in name, by almost every prominent figure of note. In recent years, no major public figures, including Strom Thurmond and David Duke, have defined themselves as white supremacists.

Despite anti-racism's successes, some people feel that racism is still a powerful force in Western societies. Some proponents of anti-racism point to ongoing differences in quality of life among different races as examples of the effects of underlying racist attitudes and point to phenomena such as the drug war, the prison system, ongoing segregation of housing, racial profiling, police brutality, U.S. imperialism, and the immigration reductionism movement.[citation needed] Many political commentators have also noted that politicians play on racially biased fears when advocating policies associated with the War on Terrorism, such as those policies relevant to the current Iraq War.[citation needed] Anti-racists have advocated various responses to this perceived underlying racism, from constitutional changes (for instance, changes in drug laws or in school funding) to greater individual sensitivity. A few of the more controversial programs advocated by some anti-racists include reparations, affirmative action, diversity training, and the antifa movement.

Critics of contemporary anti-racism say that ethnicity amid some degree of ethnocentrism is legitimate and beneficial, that there are non-discriminatory explanations to most racial differences in social and economic position, and that the presumption that discrimination is pervasive, hidden and immensely destructive leads to intolerable bureaucratic interference in the daily lives of individuals, organizations, and communities.[citation needed] Many consider anti-racism to be fueled by a leftist coalition between white guilt and identity politics, and have stated that anti-racism, as practiced in the contemporary Western world, is essentially racism against white people.[citation needed] However, anti-anti-racist groups do not consider themselves racist.[citation needed]

This, however, does not address the large amount of evidence (as Valian has pointed out) to the existence of preconceptions towards race, gender and age which affect the way we see and relate with/to others and which accumulate over time leading to considerable differences which in turn mold the person into a preconceived role with "proper" limits and aspirations.[citation needed]

In recent years the belief that race has no effect on intelligence or potential -- a basic tenet of anti-racist philosophy -- has been challenged by scholars such as Charles Murray, Michael Levin, and J. Philippe Rushton and defended by other scholars such as Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Levin and Richard Lewontin.

Some fear that strident anti-racism measures may actually have the paradoxical effect of increasing racism.[citation needed] The appearance of "pandering to minorities" may be perceived as injustice, and those with mild ethnic loyalties are agitated into more extreme positions than would otherwise have occurred without anti-racism.

  • Cultural Whiplash: the Unforeseen Consequences of America's Crusade Against Racial Discrimmination / Patrick Garry (2006) ISBN 1581825692

  1. ^ UK anger over Zimbabwe violence
  2. ^ Corrupt, greedy and violent
  3. ^ Sentamu urges Mugabe action, The Independent, September 20, 2007

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-racism"
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