Racism: education the only cure

I often argue against religion, but religious conviction is just one manifestation of a much bigger problem: race and more precisely race supremacy, the belief that a particular group is superior to others and entitles those who identify with it to dominate, control or rule those who do not.

The idea of race appears to be the root of all evils as the concept has been negatively influenced for hundreds of years by a range of historical, social, political and economic events. As a result, racism today clearly denotes prejudice, violence, dislike, discrimination, and oppression. Racism is a social construct that refers to the classification of humans into groups (ethnic groups) based on various cultural (heritage, religion, language, social practices) and physical characteristics. The world is made up of thousands of ethnic groups. Europe alone counts 87 distinct ethnic minorities, each with a number of subgroups (e.g. Italians differentiate among Sardinians, Friulians, Lombards, Venetians, Sicilians, Neapolitans, Corsicans, etc.)

As people define and disseminate different conceptions of race, they actively create contrasting social realities through which racial categorization is achieved in varied ways. As a result of racial categorization, ethnic stereotypes are born which are generalized representations of ethnic groups, composed of what are ‘thought to be’ typical characteristics of members of the group. The most evident characteristics of an ethnic group relate to physical appearance, something we are genetically assigned and have no say in it!

But why is racism bad, why does it possess all of those negative connotations? Simply because it creates conflict between “us” versus “them”. It is not a coincidence that sporting events are perfect grounds for racism to manifest and prosper.

Racist behavior can take various forms and evolve from one stage to the next.

1. The first phase is when ethnic stereotypes are portrayed in ethnic jokes.
2. Next ethnic slurs (often deriving from jokes) become more and more ‘acceptable’ in the common language to make insinuations or allegations about members of a given ethnicity or to refer to them in a derogatory, pejorative, or insulting manner.
3. Harassment, physical assault, property damage can quickly follow.
4. Racist propaganda and practices that exclude members of particular groups from aspects of society represent significant dangers.
5. Ethnic cleansing and genocide are extreme examples of racist behaviour.

While media often tend to emphasize the undeniable racism of ‘white men’ in Australia, USA, and Europe, there is a tendency to ignore the fact that all peoples are racist and that genocides in the name of race supremacy have occurred all over the world, and quite often among people who share similar physical traits. The list below validates this statement with just a few examples from the last century:

• 1919 – 1920: the Bolshevik regime killed or deported an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 Don Cossacks during the Russian Civil War.
• 1941 – 1945: the Nazi German government's persecuted Jews and nearly 6 million died in the process.
• 1947: during the Partition of India 5 million Hindus and Sikhs fled from what became Pakistan into India and more than 6 million Muslims fled from what became India into Pakistan.
• 1948: the Palestinian exodus of approximately 700,000 people that accompanied the establishment of the State of Israel.
• 1927 – 1949: the Kuomintang Chinese Muslim regime launched extermination campaigns in Qinghai and Tibet against ethnic Tibetans.
• 1949: after the Republic of Indonesia achieved independence from the Netherlands, around 300.000 people, predominantly Indos or Dutch Indonesians (people of mixed Indonesian and European descent), fled or were expelled.
• 1949: in the aftermath of the Durban Riots (an inter-racial conflict between Zulus and Asians in South Africa), hundreds of Indians fled Cato Manor.
• 1957 – 1962: Egypt carried out an Anti-European policy, which resulted in the expulsion of nearly 200,000 Greeks.
• 1960: the official armed force in Congo attacked numerous European targets. This caused fear amongst the approximately 100,000 whites still resident in Congo and led to their mass exodus from the country.
• 1924: the population exchange between Greece and Turkey led to a gradual extinction of the Greek minority in the country, which decreased from 100,000 after the Turko-Greek population exchange treaty to just 2,500 in 2006.
• 1950 – 1970s: the creation of the apartheid system in South Africa involved some ethnic cleansing, including the separation of blacks and whites into separate residential areas, forced removals of non-white populations to reserved lands, restriction of their movement, education and social activities.
• 1962: relentless persecution in Myanmar of "resident aliens" led to an exodus of some 300,000 Burmese Indians.
• 1964: Zanzibar forced ethnic cleansing of Arabs and Indians from the nation.
• 1970: the government of Libya expelled all ethnic 150,000 Italians (18% of the total population).
• 1969: Honduras enacted a new land reform law, which took land away from 350,000 Salvadoran immigrants and redistributed it to native-born Honduran people.
• 1971: during the Bangladesh War of Independence around 10 million Bengalis, mainly Hindus, fled the country to escape the killings and atrocities committed by the Pakistan Army.
• 1972: forced expulsion of Uganda's entire ethnic Asian population, mostly of Indian descent.
• 1978 – 1979: some 450,000 ethnic Chinese left Vietnam by boat as refugees.
• 1984: as a result of Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, only about 15% of the Chinese population remained in the country. The small Thai minority along the border was almost completely exterminated.
• 1984: the ruling party Indian National Congress supporters formed large mobs and killed around 3,000 Sikhs around Delhi.
• 1987 – 1988: the Iraqi government under Saddam massacred 150,000 non-combatant civilians including women and children, and destroyed about 4,000 villages (out of 4,655) in Kurdistan.
• 1984 – 1985: the forced assimilation campaign directed against ethnic Turks by the Bulgarian State resulted in the expulsion of some 360,000 Bulgarian Turks to Turkey.
• 1989: some 70,000 black Mauritanians (members of the Peul, Wolof, Soninke and Bambara ethnic groups) have been expelled from Mauritania by the Mauritanian government.
• 1990: the mass expulsion of southern Lhotshampas (Bhutanese of Nepalese origin) by the northern Druk majority of Bhutan.
• 1990: the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam forcibly expelled the entire ethnic Muslim population (approx 75,000) from the Northern Province of Sri Lanka.
• 1990: approximately 95% of the total population of Hindu Kashmiri Pandits left the Kashmir Valley in 1990. Around 300,000 have either been murdered or displaced from the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir.
• 1991: Kuwait carried out the expulsion of 400,000 Palestinians.
• 1991 – 1992: political upheavals in the Balkans displaced about 2,700,000 people.
• 1991 – 1995: the widespread ethnic cleansing accompanying the Croatian War of Independence that was committed by rebel Serbs.
• 1992 – 1995: the widespread ethnic cleansing accompanying the Bosnia and Herzegovina war.
• 1994: massacres of nearly 1,000,000 Tutsis by Hutus, known as the Rwandan Genocide.
• 1995: the central government of Botswana has been trying to move Bushmen out of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
• 1997: in Indonesia there have been serious outbreaks of inter-ethnic violence on the island of Kalimantan, involving the indigenous Dayak peoples and immigrants from the island of Madura.
• 2003: Sudan has been accused of attempting to ethnically cleanse several black African ethnic groups.
• 2008: South Africa Ethnic Cleansing erupted on 11 May. The most affected foreigners have been Somalis, Ethiopians, Indians, Pakistanis, Zimbabweans and Mozambiqueans.
• 2010: the killings of ethnic Uzbeks in the South Kyrgyzstan riots resulted in the departure of thousands of Uzbek refugees to Uzbekistan.
• 2010: the deportation of Roma by France.

As we can see, unfortunately there is no ethnic group that isn’t racist and there is no place in the world that is racism-free. Racism is just not always visible until the social, political and economic conditions are favorable for it to manifest. Unemployment, poverty, crime, etc. all assist the quick escalation of racism and the only way to fight it is through education. Racism prospers where ignorance is deep-rooted!

I do not know if the natural process of mixing different ethnicities, especially through marriage or sexual relations, will eventually result in a blending of all races in the future. What I know is that the problem of racism will not be solved that way. There will always be differences between “us” and “them” and, regardless of how small they are, these could always be perceived as worth killing for if people remain ignorant. Football hooliganism is a classic example.