Racialism is a term used to describe differences between races. Racism, by contrast, is a belief that some races are inherently superior, and that others are inferior and those races therefore require different treatment.
Baffled by human diversity, confused 17th-century Europeans argued that human groups were separately created, a precursor to racist thought today.
Key reasons why 19th-century racialist ideas have no place in the modern world:
Their 19th-century racialist ideas, often termed "scientific racism" or biological determinism, are widely rejected by modern science, anthropology, and ethics. These ideologies, which proposed that humanity is divided into biologically distinct, hierarchical "races" with innate differences in intelligence or morality, have no valid place in modern society.
No Biological Basis: Modern genetics has shown that "race" is a social construct rather than a biological reality. There is no DNA or genetic basis that corresponds with the racial categories developed in the 19th century, and genetic variation within so-called "races" is greater than between them. For example, genetic diversity within the so-called "Black people" is greater than the diversity between any one of those Black people and any other "race". Africa possesses the highest level of genetic diversity in the world, with populations containing more variation than those on any other continent. Due to being the origin of modern humans, African populations have had more time to accumulate genetic variation, with an average genome having nearly a million more variants than non-African genomes. To then categorise this entire subset of diverse humans as a single category, namely "Black people", is completely inaccurate and wrong.
Contemporary science finds no biological basis for race; no single gene or trait is exclusive to any one group. Race in humans is a scientific, biological continuum of genetic and physical variation, not a set of discrete, fixed categories. It is a socially constructed concept, with human DNA 99.9% similar across all groups.
Scientific Consensus: The scientific community officially recognises that scientific racism is pseudoscientific. It was originally used to justify slavery, imperialism, and eugenics, and modern research has debunked the craniometry and early anthropology that supported these views.
Ethical and Human Rights Impact: 19th-century racialism directly fostered genocidal policies, including the Holocaust, the atrocities of the colonial era, and the creation of segregation laws like the apartheid laws in South Africa and the Jim Crow laws in the Southern United States that enforced racial segregation.
Persistence of Harmful Legacies: While scientifically invalid, these ideas still exist, leading to "new racism" or "cultural racism," which subtly continues to drive systemic inequalities in education, healthcare, and criminal justice.
Despite their lack of scientific credibility, these ideas are often revived in modern "race science" to justify discriminatory policies, necessitating active, ongoing, and critical engagement to ensure they do not inform contemporary social or scientific discourse.
The idea that biological races underlie intellectual or moral character is false. Genetic research confirms that all humans belong to a single species, Homo sapiens.
Continued Harmful Legacy: The physical exploitation of colonialism was underpinned by an entire system of beliefs, prejudices and stereotypes built around the idea of white superiority over people of colour. Many of these beliefs persist. It’s called racism, one of colonialism’s most enduring and pernicious legacies.
Ancestral Africans generally did not hold modern, skin-colour-based racialist ideologies, but, like many ancient societies, they practiced intense ethnic, tribal, and cultural discrimination. While tribalism and xenophobia existed—often involving "othering" based on caste, clan or region—the systematic, hierarchical ideology of racism as defined today was not prevalent until later interactions. Similar to other ancient civilisations worldwide, early African societies had conflicts and prejudices, but they did not operate within the same rigid racial hierarchy that developed during the colonial era. In many African contexts, tribalism or ethnic discrimination served as a primary form of prejudice, creating divisions similar to racism but based on kinship, language, or culture rather than skin colour.
The modern concept of racism, particularly anti-Black racism, is often tied to the development of 15th-19th century European colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade.
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In Arab communities
Coming back to this being a social construct, racism in Arabian communities originates from a long history of racial hierarchies, deeply influenced by the trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trades, which marginalised Sub-Saharan Africans, particularly the Zanj. These prejudices were solidified over centuries through medieval Arab discourse, which combined pre-Islamic conflicts, biblical narratives like the curse of Ham, and Greek environmental theories that linked skin colour to perceived inferiority.
Historically, the slave trade involved substantial numbers of people from East, West, and Central Africa, leading to lasting social marginalisation and negative stereotypes. Influenced by Aristotelian ideas and earlier Greco-Roman concepts, some medieval Arab writers developed a "racial" worldview. While not all shared this view, many narratives portrayed Black people as inferior. Classical Arab writings, including those on geography and medicine, often used the "theory of the seven climes," which argued that proximity to the sun (geography) determined a person's race, intellect, and character, often portraying darker-skinned people as intellectually or morally inferior. Today, this legacy persists in the form of derogatory language, social exclusion, and limited access to jobs or education for Black individuals in some Arab nations.
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