Category
Racism
This page traces "racism" as both a word and a historical phenomenon: how major dictionaries and encyclopedias around the world currently define it, and a chronological, source-cited record of how racial and ethnic hierarchy has been constructed, enforced, and challenged around the world — spanning pseudo-scientific race classification, transatlantic slavery, colonialism, the displacement of Indigenous peoples, the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust and the Romani genocide, Asian exclusion and internment in the United States, apartheid, the Rwandan genocide, caste-based discrimination, and the ongoing persecution of the Rohingya, alongside the international human-rights frameworks built in response. Every definition and fact below links to its original source so you can read further and verify it yourself.
Definitions from around the world
The same word carries different shades of meaning depending on where you look. Here is how racism is defined by dictionaries from different countries.
“a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race”
“policies, behaviours, rules, etc. that result in a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race”
“Idéologie fondée sur la croyance qu’il existe une hiérarchie entre les groupes humains, autrefois appelés « races » ; comportement inspiré par cette idéologie.”
English: “Ideology founded on the belief that there is a hierarchy between human groups, formerly called "races"; behavior inspired by this ideology.”
“(meist ideologischen Charakter tragende, zur Rechtfertigung von Rassendiskriminierung, Kolonialismus o. Ä. entwickelte) Lehre, Theorie, nach der Menschen bzw. Bevölkerungsgruppen mit bestimmten biologischen oder ethnisch-kulturellen Merkmalen anderen von Natur aus über- bzw. unterlegen sein sollen”
English: “A (usually ideologically charged) doctrine or theory, developed to justify racial discrimination, colonialism, or similar, according to which people or population groups with certain biological or ethnic-cultural characteristics are supposedly naturally superior or inferior to others.”
“Creencia que sostiene la superioridad de un grupo étnico sobre los demás, lo que conduce a la discriminación o persecución social.”
English: “A belief that upholds the superiority of one ethnic group over others, which leads to discrimination or social persecution.”