Beliefs, actions, movements, and policies adopted or developed to oppose racism
Anti-racism encompasses a range of ideas and political actions which are meant to counter racial prejudice, systemic racism, and the oppression of specific racial groups. Anti-racism is usually structured around conscious efforts and deliberate actions which are intended to create equal opportunities for all people on both an individual and a systemic level. As a philosophy, it can be engaged in by the acknowledgment of personal privileges, confronting acts as well as systems of racial discrimination and/or working to change personal racial biases. Major contemporary anti-racism efforts include the Black Lives Matter movement and workplace anti-racism.
History.
European origins.
European racism was spread to the Americas by the Europeans, but establishment views were questioned when they were applied to indigenous peoples. After the discovery of the New World, many of the members of the clergy who were sent to the New World who were educated in the new humane values of the Renaissance, still new in Europe and not ratified by the Vatican, began to criticize Spain's as well as their own Church's treatment and views of indigenous peoples and slaves.
In December 1511, Antonio de Montesinos, a Dominican friar, was the first European to rebuke openly the Spanish authorities and administrators of Hispaniola for their "cruelty and tyranny" in dealing with the American natives and those forced to labor as slaves. King Ferdinand enacted the "Laws of Burgos" and "Valladolid" in response. Enforcement was lax, and the New Laws of 1542 have to be made to take a stronger line. Because some people like Fray Bartolomé de las Casas questioned not only the Crown but the Papacy at the Valladolid Controversy whether the Indigenous were truly men who deserved baptism, Pope Paul III in the papal bull "Veritas Ipsa" or "Sublimis Deus" (1537) confirmed that the Indigenous and other races are fully rational human beings who have rights to freedom and private property, even if they are heathen. Afterward, their Christian conversion effort gained momentum along social rights, while leaving the same status recognition unanswered for Africans of Black Race, and legal social racism prevailed towards the Indians or Asians. By then, the last schism of the Reformation had taken place in Europe in those few decades along political lines, and the different views on the value of human lives of different races were not corrected in the lands of Northern Europe, which would join the Colonial race at the end of the century and over the next, as the Portuguese and Spanish Empires waned. It would take another century, with the influence of the French Empire at its height, and its consequent Enlightenment developed at the highest circles of its Court, to return these previously inconclusive issues to the forefront of the political discourse championed by many intellectual men since Rousseau. These issues gradually permeated to the lower social levels, where they were a reality lived by men and women of different races from the European racial majority.
Quaker initiatives.
In 1688, German immigrants to the Province of Pennsylvania issued a anti-slavery petition opposing slavery in the colony. After being set aside and forgotten, it was rediscovered by American abolitionists in 1844, misplaced around the 1940s, and once more rediscovered in March 2005. Prior to the American Revolution, a small group of Quakers, including John Woolman and Anthony Benezet, persuaded many fellow Quakers to emancipate their slaves, divest from the Atlantic slave trade and create unified Quaker policies against slavery. This afforded the religious denomination a measure of moral authority to help begin the American abolitionist movement. Woolman died of smallpox in England in 1775, shortly after crossing the Atlantic to spread his anti-slavery message to the Quakers of the British Isles.
During and after the American Revolution, Quaker ministrations and preachings against slavery began to spread beyond their denomination. In 1783, 300 Quakers, chiefly from London, presented the British Parliament with a petition against the Britain's involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. In 1785, English abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, studying at Cambridge, and in the course of writing an essay in Latin ("Anne liceat invitos in servitutem dare" (Is it lawful to enslave the unconsenting?), read the works of Benezet, and began a lifelong effort to abolish the British slave trade. In 1787, British abolitionists formed the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, a small nondenominational group that could lobby more successfully by incorporating Anglicans, who, unlike the Quakers, could lawfully sit in Parliament. The twelve founding members included nine Quakers and three pioneering Anglicans: Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, and William Wilberforce – all evangelical Christians.
Abolitionism.
Later successes in opposing racism were won by the abolitionist movement in England and in the United States. Though many Abolitionists did not regard blacks or mulattos as equal to whites, they did, in general, believe in freedom and often even equality of treatment for all people. A few, like John Brown, went further. Brown was willing to die on behalf of, as he said, "millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments ..." Many black Abolitionists, such as Frederick Douglass, explicitly argued for the humanity of blacks and mulattoes, and the equality of all people.
Due to resistance in the Southern United Statesand a general collapse of idealism in the North, Reconstruction ended, giving way to the nadir of American race relations. The period from about 1890 to 1920 saw the re-establishment of Jim Crow laws. President Woodrow Wilson, who regarded Reconstruction as a disaster, segregated the federal government. The Ku Klux Klan grew to its greatest peak of popularity and strength; the success of D. W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" played a major part in this member increase.
In 1911 the First Universal Races Congress met in London, at which distinguished speakers from many countries for four days discussed race problems and ways to improve interracial relations.
Socialism.
Karl Marx was supportive of the Union during the American Civil War and advocated more radical abolitionist measures with his "Address of the International Working Men's Association" to Abraham Lincoln in 1864. Lincoln would in return commend the International Working Men's Association for their support and declared that the defeat of the South would be a victory for all of humanity.
The Russian Revolution was perceived as a rupture with imperialism for various civil rights and decolonization struggles and providing a space for oppressed groups across the world. This was given further credence with the Soviet Union supporting many anti-colonial third world movements with financial funds against European colonial powers.
In his work,"The Socialist Revolution and the Rights of Nation to Self-Determinism", Vladimir Lenin wrote that socialism would enforce the complete equality of all nations and "give effect to the right of oppressed nations to self-determination". Lenin would make anti-imperialism a tenet of Marxist ideology and coordinate revolutions through the Comintern.
Marxist theorist Leon Trotsky had advocated for national self-determination for the black population in South Africa. In response to the programmatic document of the South African Left Opposition, he wrote in 1935:
"We must accept decisively and without any reservation the complete and unconditional right of the blacks to independence. Only on the basis of a mutual struggle against the domination of the white exploiters can the solidarity of black and white toilers be cultivated and strengthened".
Through the 1930s, the first viable black trade unions in Transvaal, South Africa were established by Trotskyists.
Modern left-wing commentators have argued that capitalism promotes racism alongside culture wars over issues such as immigration and representation of ethnic minorities whilst refusing to address economic inequalities.
Socialist groups have also been closely aligned with a number of anti-racist organizations such as Love Music Hate Racism, Stand Up to Racism, Anti-Nazi League and Unite Against Fascism.
Science.
Friedrich Tiedemann was one of the first people to scientifically contest racism. In 1836, using craniometric and brain measurements (taken by him from Europeans and black people from different parts of the world), he refuted the belief of many contemporary naturalists and anatomists that black people have smaller brains and are thus intellectually inferior to white people, saying it was scientifically unfounded and based merely on the prejudiced opinions of travelers and explorers. The evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin wrote in 1871 that ‘[i]t may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant’ and that ‘[a]lthough the existing races of man differ in many respects, as in colour, hair, shape of skull, proportions of the body, &amp;c., yet if their whole structure be taken into consideration they are found to resemble each other closely in a multitude of points.’
German ethnographer Adolf Bastian promoted the idea known as "psychic unity of mankind", the belief in a universal mental framework present in all humans regardless of race. Rudolf Virchow, an early biological anthropologist criticized Ernst Haeckel's classification of humanity into "higher and lower races". The two authors influenced American anthropologist Franz Boas who promoted the idea that differences in behavior between human populations are purely cultural rather than determined by biological differences. Later anthropologists like Marcel Mauss, Bronisław Malinowski, Pierre Clastres, and Claude Lévi-Strauss continued to focus on culture and reject racial models of differences in human behavior.
The Jena Declaration, published by the German Zoological Society, rejects the idea of human "races" and distances itself from the racial theories of Ernst Haeckel and other 20th century scientists. It claims that genetic variation between human populations is smaller than within them, demonstrating that the biological concept of "races" is invalid. The statement highlights that there are no specific genes or genetic markers that match with conventional racial categorizations. It also indicates that the idea of "races" is based on racism rather than any scientific factuality.
Interwar period: Racial Equality Proposal.
After the end of seclusion in the 1850s, Japan signed unequal treaties, the so-called Ansei Treaties, but soon came to demand equal status with the Western powers. Correcting that inequality became the most urgent international issue of the Meiji government. In that context, the Japanese delegation to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference proposed the clause in the Covenant of the League of Nations. The first draft was presented to the League of Nations Commission by Makino Nobuaki on 13 February as an amendment to Article 21:The equality of nations being a basic principle of the League of Nations, the High Contracting Parties agree to accord, as soon as possible, to all alien nationals of States Members of the League equal and just treatment in every respect, making no distinction, either in law or in fact, on account of their race or nationality.After Makino's speech, Lord Cecil stated that the Japanese proposal was a very controversial one and he suggested that perhaps the matter was so controversial that it should not be discussed at all. Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos also suggested that a clause banning religious discrimination should also be removed since that was also a very controversial matter. That led to objections from a Portuguese diplomat, who stated that his country had never signed a treaty before that did not mention God, which caused Cecil to remark perhaps this time, they would all just have to a take a chance of avoiding the wrath of the Almighty by not mentioning Him.
Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes clarified his opposition and announced at a meeting that "ninety-five out of one hundred Australians rejected the very idea of equality. Hughes had entered politics as a trade unionist and, like most others in the working class, was very strongly opposed to Asian immigration to Australia. (The exclusion of Asian immigration was a popular cause with unions in Canada, the US, Australia, and New Zealand in the early 20th century.)
The Chinese delegation, which was otherwise at daggers drawn with the Japanese over the question of the former German colony of Qingdao and the rest of the German concessions in Shandong Province, also said that it would support the clause. One contemporary Chinese diplomat said the Shandong question was far more important to his government than the clause. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George found himself in an awkward situation since Britain had signed an alliance with Japan in 1902, but he also wanted to hold the British Empire's delegation together.
Although the proposal received a majority (11 out of 16) of votes, the proposal was still problematic for the segregationist