racism
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: derivation
Etymology: Borrowed from French racisme, equivalent to race + -ism.
Base: race
Affixes: -ism
Inflected forms:
form: racisms
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: The belief that there are distinct human races with inherent differences which determine their abilities, and generally that some are superior and others inferior.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
usually
examples: It is altogether inaccurate to suggest that Europe is being indoctrinated with Fascism or Racism.
He lost his racism when he worked with a black man in Chicago. He lost his homophobia when he was befriended and looked after by his gay neighbors, a doctor and a nurse, in Little Rock.
But other kinds of talk and text that are not visible, so called covert racist discourse, may be just as important in reproducing the culturally shared ideas that underpin racism.
gloss: The policies, practices, or systems (e.g. government or political) promoting this belief or promoting the dominance of one or more races over others.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
usually
examples: Martin Luther King spoke out against racism.
In part, the answer is that racism extends considerably beyond prejudiced beliefs. The essential feature of racism is not hostility or misperception, but rather the defense of a system from which advantage is derived on the basis of race. The manner in which the defense is articulated – either with hostility or subtlety – is not nearly as important as the fact that it insures the continuation of a privileged relationship. Thus it is necessary to broaden the definition of racism beyond prejudice to include sentiments that in their consequence, if not in their intent, support the racial status quo.
In “Crazy for This Democracy” (1945), Hurston critiques the US government's racism at home and abroad, including its silence on the anticolonial movements in Africa.
gloss: Prejudice or discrimination based upon race or ethnicity; (countable) an action of such discrimination.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
usually
examples: For, if racism against non-whites is morally wrong and unjustifiable, then how can racism against whites be morally right and justifiable?
This was partly true, but the biggest thing stopping him was that he had tried going to a college in Adelaide before and grew tired of the little racisms and discrimination that he got there.
Of course, racism has a long and inglorious history in US politics. But it now has a very new iteration in the nerdy tech-savvy generation of the alt right. Racism 2.0. They don't speak of eugenics but rather of maintaining "human biodiversity". And they have a thing about IQ tests showing that white people are cleverer than others. […] For in cross-pollinating with the anonymity and viciousness of the internet, with porn and video games replacing Christianity as the common language in which conservatives talk to each other, with openly anti-democratic impulses being justified as rationality, the virus of racism is capable of spreading as never before.
Synonyms: ethnicism†
racialism
racism
Related words: antiracist
anti-racist
racist
racistic
ADL
action
Afrocentrism
anti-semitism
antisemitism
apartheid
black supremacy
civil rights movement
cultural anthropology
cultural relativism
ethnic majority
ethnic minority
ethnocentrism
ethnonationalism
eugenics
Eurocentrism
hate crime
historical particularism
intolerance
KKK
Ku Klux Klan
monogenism
multiculturalism
nationalism
otherness
political correctness
polygenism
racialism
racial profiling
social Darwinism
supremacism
tolerance
unilineal evolution
white supremacy
xenophobia
xenophobism
clannism
scientific racism
Derived words: antiracism
anti-racism
biological racism
chopstickism
cryptoracism
cyberracism
environmental racism
ethnoracism
gaycism
gracism
hyperracism
institutional racism
linguicism
metaracism
neoracism
non-racism
nonracism
postracism
proto-racism
pseudoracism
quasiracism
racism of low expectations
reverse racism
scientific racism
systemic racism
ultraracism
unracism
xenoracism
Translations: