Where does the word racism come from?

The word racism derives from the French word racisme, which is first recorded in the 1800s. The suffix -ism is used in racism to indicate a doctrine of prejudice—in this case, a prejudice based on race (-ism is used in the same way in words like sexism and ageism).

The first known record of the word racism being used in English is from a 1902 speech by Colonel Richard Henry Pratt at the annual meeting of the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian: “Association of races and classes is necessary in order to destroy racism and classism.” What may seem like a positive statement was actually said in the context of a speech based on the classically racist notion that Native Americans need to be “civilized” in order to be assimilated into the dominant white American society.

Is racism a belief, a pattern of behavior, or a system? Racism certainly relies on the belief that certain groups of people are inferior. People who are racist dehumanize these groups by treating them as subhuman, often through the use of racist language. In this way, racism prevents people from seeing others as individuals. But those who advocate for the recognition that racism is systemic often note that referring to racism as simply a belief ignores these actions taken due to such a belief and the oppression said to be embedded in such systems.

Those who use the word racism to refer to more than a belief also often point out the importance of recognizing the imbalance of power in the equation. Namely, they note that racism is a tool of the dominant group, the group with economic, social, or cultural power—in most cases, white people. (Use of the term reverse racism, such as to refer to prejudice against white people, is often criticized for dismissing the role of power in most cases of racism and its systemic use.)

Many people tend to think of racism as glaring and obvious: racist slurs, slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis, lynching, and other violent hate crimes. But racism exists in many forms. In the U.S., examples of racism implemented explicitly and on an institutional level include Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, and segregation, which denied African Americans many basic rights and resulted in inferior schools, housing, and access to jobs—all inequities that continue to persist in some form. In South Africa, the policy of apartheid was used by white South Africans to segregate and economically and politically oppress Black South Africans and other nonwhite citizens. In Australia, Aborigines have been subjected to racist mistreatment since the arrival of white settlers, and other Indigenous peoples across the world have been oppressed under racist colonialism and imperialism.

Other forms of racism may not be as readily obvious to people who are not targeted by them. One example is redlining, in which institutions like banks and insurance companies refuse or limit loans, mortgages, or insurance policies within specific geographic areas—typically neighborhoods where people of color live. Another example is racist profiling and mistreatment of people of color by police. Discussion of systemic racism often references statistics that highlight the prevalence of these practices. In the U.S., for example, Black people are arrested and imprisoned at higher rates. They are also, on average, less likely to be hired for jobs than white candidates, despite the fact that there are laws prohibiting the consideration of race in the hiring process. Labor statistics also frequently show a wage gap between white people and nonwhite people—meaning people of color earn less for doing the same work. (The theory of intersectionality is the idea that certain groups are the subject of multiple forms of systemic oppression—women of color, for example, are regularly shown to earn lower wages than other people doing the same job.) The infant mortality rate for African Americans is often more than twice that of white Americans and is one of the inequities that is often attributed to systemic racism.

Other forms of racism are more subtle and may even be unintentional. These often result from implicit bias and conscious or unconscious stereotypes. For example, when a white person tells a Black person they’re articulate, it may be offered as a sincere compliment, but it often implies a sense of surprise that a Black person speaks so well. (Actions and statements like these are sometimes called microaggressions.)

Many theories about racism also focus on how it can be internalized by the people it targets. The term colorism, for example, is often used to refer to the practice within a group, such as between or among Black people, of favoritism toward those with a lighter skin tone and mistreatment or exclusion of those with a darker skin tone.

What is antiracism?

Antiracism is an active effort to identify and dismantle racism. It is often distinguished from the questionably neutral stance of simply being “not racist.” Like racism, antiracism can be implemented in both big ways, such as passing antidiscrimination laws and abolishing racist ones, and small ways, such as explicitly labeling racist comments as racist, instead of using euphemistic terms like racially charged.

Antiracist movements like the Civil Rights Movement, the movement to end apartheid, and those led by organizations like Black Lives Matter work to replace racism and injustice with justice. As these efforts continue, the many terms used in the discussion of racism are sure to evolve.