CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
“…I see racism in stores being sold as cream, on television as movies and in church as baptismal name and many other places we all know but refuse to acknowledge. The labours of our heroes past have already gone in vain because our mentality has been colonized…I hope that either the world accepts us or we accept ourselves…”
Anonymous
BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
According to Western State centre (2012), during the reformation of the 16th and 17th century, one of the key questions among religious hierarchy was whether blacks and Indians had souls and were humans. This was at the time when Europeans were freshly exposed to Africans and people from North and South America. The question brought a division between the catholic and the protestant. However, the catholic was the first to come up with an answer. The catholic agreed that Blacks had souls and therefore it became an offence in most Catholic colonies to kill a slave without reason, (Western State Centre dismantling racism project 2012). Due to the importance and necessity of slavery, religious was used to justify slavery and racism as people of color were classified as pagans and soulless. The conversion of a large number of people of color to Christianity and the eventual decline in importance and power of religion and religious leaders, the need arises to employ a new way to promote racism so as to justify slavery. This eventually led to the employment of biological, zoological geographical and botanical theories to promote and justify slavery and by implication, racism.
Europe in the 19th century became developed in sciences and social sciences like never before. It was during this period that Darwin (1859) published ―The Origin of Species‖, where he analyzed and explained the evolution process of man (as cited in Western State center dismantling racism project 2012). Although, it is widely believed that Darwin theory itself wasn‘t racial but philosophers and social scientist used it to promote, enhance and justify racism. It was later called Social Darwinism. JC Prichard (1838) during his lecture on the ―Extinction of Human Race‖ was reported to have said the savage race couldn‘t be saved because it was the law of nature for only the fittest to survive (as cited in Western State Center dismantling racism project 2012). His point was made clearer by W. Winwood Reade (1864) and I quote;
“England and France will rule Africa; Africans will dig the ditches and water the desert. It will be hard work and the Africans will probably become extinct. We must learn to look at the result with composure…law of nature that the weak must be devoured by the strong
(Cited in Western State Centre dismantling racism project 2012).
This strongly, but sadly points to how Africans were seen. Africans were dying of diseases, poverty but mostly hardship and hard labor not to mention slavery imposed on them by the white men and all they could do was to justify it by the law of nature (survival of the fittest).
Fredrick Farrar (1866), as cited in Western State Centre dismantling racism project (2012) during his lecture on ―Aptitude of Race‖, divided race into 3:
- Savage (All Africans and people of color)
- Semi-Civilized (Chinese)
- Civilized (Europe, Aryans, ETC)
When the survival of the fittest theory could not really totally justify racism, it was time to forge another theory. A famous English anatomist, Robert Knox (1850) went way further to prove that people of color were intellectually inferior. It was later discovered that his argument was based on an experiment he conducted on the autopsy of only but one man of color (as cited in Western State Center dismantling reason project 2012). This time, it was based on intelligence. This theory in conjunction with other theories brought about the Eugenics –an effect to breed better humans by encouraging the reproduction of people with good genes and discouraging those with bad genes from reproducing. They were said to fight to keep racial, ethnic and regional groups separated. This was the true story behind the Holocaust perpetrated by Adolf Hitler in Nazis Germany, not to mention the United States which was said to have about 20,000 students focused on the Eugenics in 1928 (western state centre 2012).
When the concept of intellectual inferiority could no longer hold water, a new theory had to be developed. The third world which at first was a harmless term for all the non-aligned (mostly African) countries during the cold war between first world (NATO) led by USA and second world (Warsaw Pact) led by USSR became associated with the (underdeveloped) developing countries of Africa. Third world lost it initial meaning and became synonymous with Africa pointing to the underdevelopment, wars, poverty and crime many believe is an unbeatable part of the black continent. Third world which was Africa, was synonymous with poverty, backwardness crime and war and most countries claimed to be sending huge amounts of money to Africa as aids and over exaggerating and over publicizing wars, crime and poverty in Africa which triggers hatred among the citizens of those countries who believe their government is not doing enough for them but sending it to Africa.
Over the years, mainly the 16th, 17th and 18th century, people used different terms such as Caucasoid, or white for Europeans, Mongoloid, or yellow for Asians and Negroid, or black for Africans for geographical segregation (western state centre 2012). Eventually, Negroid was employed and become more popular than the others. More recently, the term African is used to refer to any person of color. In other words, all persons of color are racially believed to be from Africa, this is the practice in china.
- Race and Racism have existed throughout history. In the article; A History: The Construction of Race and Racism, David and Moira (2012) claimed that ―race is a false classification of people that is not based on any (real) accurate biological or scientific truth. According to Benjamin Isaac (2003), Racism is ―an attitude towards individuals and groups of peoples which posits a direct and linear connection between physical and mental qualities. It therefore attributes to those individuals and groups of peoples collective traits, physical, mental and moral, which are constant and unalterable by human will, because they are caused by hereditary factors or external influences, such as climate or geography‖. Hart and James (2008) on the other hand, believe racism is characterized by explicitly racist attitudes regarding the inferiority of blacks or other minorities and overt tendencies to engage in unambiguously discriminatory behavior.
Various forms of racism had been proffered by several authors, however those provided by Sandra Hinson, Richard Healey and Nathaniel Weisenberg (2011) at the Grassroots Policy Project, highlighted but a few, which are; Interpersonal, Internalized, Institutional and Structural. But the forms given by Adam R. Pearson, John F. Dovidio and Samuel L. Gaertner (2009) seem to be the most comprehensive for the purpose of this study. These are Dominative and Aversive racism as identified by Kovel cited by Adam R. Pearson, John F. Dovidio and Samuel L.
Gaertner et al. But most importantly, unconscious racism by Hart Blanton and James Jaccard (2008) is the most relevant for this study (see western state center 2012, Charlotte Reading 2013 for more history of race and racism)
- Unconscious Racism is the presence of racial behavior or tendency but the absences of conscious knowledge. According to National Association of Social Worker (2007), there are three types of subtle racism, they are; Symbolic, Aversive and Unconscious Racism, but to some scholars, aversive and unconscious racism are the same. To get a full understanding of unconscious racism, one has to know what it means to be unconscious. Hart Blanton and James Jaccard (2008) elaborated 3 categories of unconscious with relations to racism. To paint a good picture, we have to borrow their definitions, they are as follow;
Unknown Effect: The first working definition of unconscious refers to individuals‘ lack of awareness of the effects of their own actions on other people, social institutions, and so on. When unconscious racism is framed in these terms, it draws attention to the unwitting ways in which one‘s own actions promote racial disparities. Such unconscious racism has been described in sociological theories that refer to institutional racism.
Unknown Causes: Another way in which people may lack conscious access to their racist leanings is that they may fail to perceive the factors that cause them to exhibit racial preferences. People are unconscious racists in this sense if they are unable to gain subjective access to the determinants of their own actions. A large literature on impression formation offers empirical support for this perspective. Psychologists have shown, for instance, that a shove given by one person to another might appear aggressive when the person doing the shoving is black, but that it
might seem playful when the person doing the shoving is white by Duncan (1976) cited by Hart and James (2008) et al.
Inaccessible Attitudes: Although it is feasible to argue that people lack knowledge of both the causes and the consequences of their actions, this set of observations alone does not provide a basis for claiming that people possess racist attitudes that escape subjective awareness. What is the evidence for this third type of unconscious racism—ignorance about the presence of racist attitude (as propounded by Hart Blanton and James Jaccard (2008).CHINA, traditionally called Zhongguo in Chinese mandarin, is the largest country in Asia (the largest continent), and has the largest population in the world. It is believe to cover nearly the entire East Asia landmass, approximately one-fourteenth of the land area of the world and about one-fifth of humanity is of Chinese nationality Encyclopedia Britannica (2012). China is bordered by about 16 countries; Mongolia, Russia, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Pakistan, etc. China has 33 administrative unit directly under the central government; 22 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, 4 municipalities (Chongqing, Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin) and 2 special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau) Encyclopedia Britannica (2012). China is home to 55 ethnic groups. Han Chinese make up 91.55% of the population and the majority of the remaining 8.41% are visually indistinguishable from their Han countrymen, so it is correct to say China is more homogenous than heterogeneous.
