Home > Anti-racism

The more ideological forms of anti-racism are associated with:

• Contemporary liberal and leftist movements in general.
• Affirmative action, which is largely based on the view that pervasive discrimination is responsible for differences in the proportional representation of different racial groups in occupational and similar categories. That view has led, at least in the view of critics, to racial quotas and reverse discrimination.
• Diversity training, which tends toward the view that basic re-orientation of corporate and cultural attitudes is necessary to counter entrenched patterns of insensitivity and discrimination.
• The antifa ("antifascist") movement, the targets of which prominently include racism, and which favors direct action that frequently becomes violent.

Although many now consider it fundamental to social justice, anti-racism is a recent development. The 1968 convention was the first the United States Democratic Party held without whites-only delegations. One of the first figures in the Roman Catholic Church to identify racial segregation as a sin, Fr. George Dunne, S.J. , died only in 1998. Even the word "racism" did not appear in many dictionaries before the Second World War.

The theoretical basis for an anti-racism movement was laid during the 1920s and 1930s by anthropologists such as Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, Margaret MeadMargaret Mead Margaret Mead ( December 16 1901 November 15 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist. She was born in Philadelphia to a university professor father and a social activist mother. She graduated from Barnard College in 1923 and received h, and Ashley MontaguAshley Montagu ( 1905 1999), was an English anthropologist and humanist who chose to direct his numerous published studies on the significant relationship of mother and infant to the general public. The humanizing effects of touch informed the studies of. Major events in the rapid practical development of the movement in the years following the Second World War include:

• The 1950 UNESCO Statement on Race, followed in 1951 by the UNESCO Statement on the Nature of Race and Race Differences [need links]. Both statements asserted that biological differentiation of races is without foundation, and that race is a social myth rather than a biological phenomenon.
• The 1963 United Nations General Assembly adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the 1965 adoption of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
• The United States Civil Rights Act of 1964The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (CRA '64) in the United States was landmark legislation. The original purpose of the Bill was to protect black men from job (and other) discrimination, but at the last minute in an attempt to kill the bill, it was expanded to.

In recent years the theoretical foundations of anti-racist ideology have been vigorously attacked by scholars such as Charles MurrayCharles A. Murray (b. 1943) is the author of several non-fiction books concerning modern social issues and politics. He is most notable for his coauthorship of the highly controversial book The Bell Curve with Richard Herrnstein in 1994. His other works i, Michael Levin , and J. Philippe RushtonPhilippe Rushton (born 1943 in Northern Ireland), a psychology professor at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, is one of the most vocal academic advocates of the notion that Blacks, Whites and Asians (or "Orientals", as he prefers to call them), c and vigorously defended by other scholars such as Stephen Jay GouldStephen Jay Gould ( September 10, 1941 May 20, 2002) was a New York-born American paleontologist, an evolutionary biologist and historian of science. He was the most influential and widely-read writer of research-based popular science of his generation. and Richard LewontinRichard Charles Lewontin (born March 29, 1929) is an evolutionary biologist, geneticist and social commentator at Harvard University. A leader in developing the mathematical basis of population genetics and evolutionary theory, he pioneered the notion of.

Proponents of the stronger forms of anti-racism say that rooting out discriminatory attitudes and practices is a requirement of simple justiceJustice is a concept involving the fair and moral treatment of all persons, especially in law. It is often seen as the continued effort to do what is "right. In most of all cases "right" is determined by either the majority or logic. If a person lives und. Critics say that ethnicity amd some degree of ethnocentrism is legitimate and beneficial, that there are non-discriminatory explanations to most racial differences in social and economic position, and that the presumption that discrimination is pervasive, hidden and immensely destructive leads to intolerable bureaucratic interference in the daily lives of individuals, organizations, and communities.