Racism

RACISM. - A term that came into use in Italy (and in France: racisme) starting in 1935-'38, to designate a doctrine and a political practice concerning race, disseminated by National Socialism (v.), which had shortly before established itself totalitarianly in Germany.

The doctrine was based, essentially, on the asserted preponderant value assumed in the unfolding of historical events and the consequent development of human civilization by the contemporaneous existence of superior races endowed with the capacity for command, creation, and inventiveness, and of inferior races purely suited to executive tasks, capable only of carrying out critical, disintegrating and dissolving activities, if not properly restrained and guided. The political practice, dictated by the aforementioned doctrinal assertions, aimed at ensuring, by relying on extensive legislative activity, the political and social predominance of the race held to be superior over the one, or those, considered inferior, with the further concern of safeguarding and strengthening for the future their purity and soundness. Following the German example, the expression r. soon also took on a clear antisemitic meaning, for the reason that the Aryan European populations would have found themselves in the imminent danger of being irremediably contaminated by the Jewish nuclei received into their territory during the preceding centuries. In Italy, the Fascist government, at first extraneous to r., acceded to it in 1938 by promulgating antisemitic laws domestically and against miscegenation in the colonies; but, owing to the aversion of the Church and, in general, of the population, r. took on persecutory extremes only during the German occupation.

Besides an iniquitous differentiation of juridical status among citizens themselves within the respective States, the aforementioned doctrine and political practice also brought about an alarming tendency, on the part of the powers that considered themselves populated by superior races, to impose their hegemony over neighboring ethnic groups, qualified as an inferior race; a result achieved, for example, by National Socialist Germany, albeit ephemerally, by grafting the new pseudo-scientific racial concepts onto the pan-Germanist axioms of the recent past (v. PANGERMANESIMO). Evident, moreover, was the irreconcilable antithesis immediately arising between the doctrine and political practice of r. and the dictates of Catholic morality, which teaches the equality in Christ of all men, and of democratic practice, postulating the equality and freedom of all citizens, regardless of sex, race, language or religious confession.

The doctrinal precedents of r. are quite numerous; but, keeping to the more recent years, it suffices to recall the writings of the Frenchman J. A. Gobineau and the Englishman H. S. Chamberlain, who maintained, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the absolute superiority of the Aryan race (existing in its purest state, according to Chamberlain among the Anglo-Saxons and according to Gobineau among the Germans).

As precedents of the political practice, on the other hand, one should recall the numerous expedients devised in North America to keep the numerous Negro population (introduced there from the sixteenth century onward), the remnants of the Redskin tribes and also not a few immigrants of poorer races (Slavs, Latins, etc.) in a condition of clear juridical-social inferiority; noting, moreover, in this regard, that, beyond and more than true legislative discriminations, numerous extralegal customs and impositions, traditionally maintained, have often been effective in this sense, such as complete separation in daily life, extended to public establishments and means of transport, privileges in hiring for work, the prohibition of attending institutions of higher culture, lynching, etc.

Currently, one may recall the renewed flourishing of r. that has occurred in the Union of South Africa after the rise to government, in 1948, of Malan's Nationalist Party (in whose electoral program the necessity of an absolute "segregation" for the colored races was affirmed: a principle called that of apartheid).

Paolo Biscaretti di Ruffia