Racism

A Short History

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by George M. Fredrickson

Princeton University Press

Due/Published May 2002, 224 pages, cloth

ISBN 069100899X

Are antisemitism and white supremacy manifestations of a general phenomenon? Why didn't racism appear in Europe before the fourteenth century, and why did it flourish as never before in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Why did the twentieth century see institutionalized racism in its most extreme forms? Why are egalitarian societies particularly susceptible to virulent racism? What do apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, and the American South under Jim Crow have in common? How did the Holocaust advance civil rights in the United States?

With a blend of learning, economy, and cutting insight, George Fredrickson surveys the history of Western racism from its emergence in the late Middle Ages to the present. Beginning with the medieval antisemitism that put Jews beyond the pale of humanity, he traces the spread of racist thinking in the wake of European expansionism and the beginnings of the African slave trade. And he examines how the Enlightenment and nineteenth-century romantic nationalism created a new intellectual context for debates over slavery and Jewish emancipation.

Fredrickson then makes the first sustained comparison between the color-coded racism of nineteenth-century America and the antisemitic racism that appeared in Germany around the same time. He finds similarity enough to justify the common label but also major differences in the nature and functions of the stereotypes invoked. The book concludes with a provocative account of the rise and decline of the twentieth century's overtly racist regimes--the Jim Crow South, Nazi Germany, and apartheid South Africa--in the context of world historical developments.

Review

"It is uniquely in the West that we find the dialectical interaction between a premise of equality and an intense prejudice toward certain groups that would seem to be a precondition for the full flowering of racism as an ideology or worldview." – George Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History

Racism is one of those concepts frequently bandied about in contemporary discussion, but also one defined differently by almost everyone who uses it. In this remarkably lucid and incisive study, George Fredrickson examines the history of Western concepts of racism. He also compares the rise and fall of overtly racist regimes and the ideological underpinnings of racism in Nazi Germany, the Jim Crow American South, and South Africa. Like few other studies, Racism: A Short History illuminates the nature of racism, why it springs up in egalitarian societies, and how we might grapple with it in the twenty-first century.

Fredrickson understands racism as an attitude and a system of practices that "proposes to establish a racial order, a permanent group hierarchy that is believed to reflect the laws of God." He finds a definition of racism that lies between the view of it as a modern concept that grew out of scientific theories of race and an understanding of it as a manifestation of ancient tribalism. Fredrickson locates the beginning of Western racism history in the Renaissance when religious intolerance toward Jews and Muslims during the Middle Ages segued into racist attitudes toward inhabitants of the New World and Africa. He traces the rise of white supremacy and anti-Semitism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, exploring how the Enlightenment and romantic nationalism created the context for debates over slavery and Jewish emancipation. In the final chapter, Fredrickson considers the similarities and differences between racist rule in Nazi Germany, the Jim Crow American South, and apartheid South Africa. Fredrickson also examines these regimes in the context of world historical developments.

Sander Gilman writes, "Finally we have a concise, clear, and authoritative overview of the history of racism. Covering all forms of Western racism in the modern world, this volume provides a comparative context for our teaching and research about race and racism. In a world in which ‘race' has begun to be reintroduced in science and social science, the dangers inherent in this are revealed in George M. Fredrickson's admirable work."