International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities
Racism is the belief that the perceived superiority, whether physical, intellectual or cultural, of one group over another is attributable to the inherent quality of race. Such a belief has, throughout history, served as justification for the domination, oppression and extermination of groups designated as in some way inferior, usually due to their possession of different genetically transmitted physical characteristics such as skin colour. Since the early 1930s, when the term originated, racism has become an increasingly capacious concept, now often used to signify a system of oppression. That is, it refers to the intersection of racist beliefs, whether avowed or unconscious, cultural practices and social institutions that discriminate against a class of persons possessing a common racial identity.
Globally, racism has produced deep tension across the social fabric. The former colonies of European states, including the US, are sites of racial violence, extending beyond its usual form of white against black to include indigenous genocide (e.g. Rwanda). Anti-colonialist thinkers point to the seamless continuity between colonialism, racism and patriarchy to account for racism’s remarkable intransigence (Fanon 1967).
The privilege attached to white masculinity often goes unquestioned; indeed, as a marker of cultural dominance, it becomes ‘natural’ (Frankenburg 1993).
Under the surface of colonialism and racism resides masculinism. The term ‘White Man’s Burden’, the title of an 1899 poem by Kipling, refers to the notion that white European colonists had the responsibility of civilising the so-called primitive and heathen masses of the globe. As a way of rendering noble an imperial mission founded upon racism, the ‘White Man’s Burden’ was a cultural lens through which Europeans saw other cultures as child-like and feminine as well as demonic.
Fascism, like the anti-Semitic racism at its core, is animated by beliefs about masculinity and the repudiation of femininity, softness and indulgence (Theweleit 1989). The fascist warrior, ‘a man of steel’, is armoured against the femininity of his racial others. The association of Jewishness with femininity can be traced back to medieval anti-Semitism, and it received one of its sharpest modern articulations in Weininger’s Sex and Character (1903).
References and further reading
Fanon, F. (1967) Black Skin, White Masks, translated by C.L.Markmann, New York: Grove Weidenfeld.
Frankenburg, R. (1993) White Women, Race Matters, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Theweleit, K. (1989) Male Fantasies, Volume 2: Male Bodies, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Weininger, O. [1903] (2005) Sex and Character, translated by L.Lob, edited by D.Steuer, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
See also: race and ethnicity
MICHAEL UEBEL
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