Racists are made not born. At birth, a baby is unable to tell the difference among religions, races, sex, social status or any of the others ways in which humans vary.

Racism is Learned
As that youngster grows up, he or she learns to distinguish among people with European, Asian, or African backgrounds. Depending upon how the child is raised it will begin to associate positive, negative, or neutral characteristics with each race. Parental influence is huge.

Peer group pressure is another, though less important, factor. We all want to fit in. We all want to be part of a group. If the group we hang with has a lot of racists in it, we are likely to adopt, or pretend to adopt, their prejudices. This is a way of bonding, of strengthening our group membership.

Thirdly, there are the bad experiences. Suppose a person is beaten up by someone of another race. People who tend towards racism will blame race for the violence of the attacker. But, violence is a trait found in all races; it isn’t logical to attribute it to all members of a race. Not all white people are violent and not all Black people are peaceable.

Negative Judgements Directed at Group
Not liking certain people is okay. The character of a Chinese person may offend you, or a white person may scrimp on bathing and smell unpleasant. There’s nothing wrong with not liking these people.

What is wrong is believing that because one white person stinks all white people reek; or, that because one Chinese person is offensive they all must be.

So, racism is all about negative judgements directed towards a racial group of people. And, a racial group can be described as people “who are defined by reference to their race, colour, nationality (including citizenship), or ethnic or national origin.” That’s how they put it in British law.

But, that’s not a complete definition. In fact, there really isn’t one.

Racism is not Defined
Does racism only mean discrimination based on skin colour – the most visible difference? Or does it include religion, nationality, cultural matters, language, or some other characteristic?

Scientists especially don’t like the term “race.” In 2004, an entire issue of the influential journal Nature Reviews Genetics was devoted to it. The geneticists agreed with most biological anthropologists that for human biology the term “race” is unhelpful. So, the words race and racism are imperfect, but until someone comes along with better ones they’ll have to do.

Racism exists between and among all groups. It is most familiar to us as white people behaving negatively towards visible minorities.

(And, visible minorities is another phrase that is out of favour.)

Racism Invented to Serve Colonialism
According to the British historian Basil Davidson, racism is a relatively new phenomenon and only surfaced because it could be used as a justification for slavery in the Americas.

By classifying Africans as sub-human, slave traders and owners could get around the Christian belief that all people are created equal. This was also a way of dodging the creationist idea that all humans are descended from common ancestors.

This loophole in Christian theory had been found by Juan Gines de Sepulveda. In the 16th century, the Spanish theologian said that conquering and enslaving Indians in the Americas had the blessing of the church. The Indians, Sepulveda decided, did not have souls and this made them “natural slaves.”

Human Genome Project
Others looked for evidence that racism had a sound footing science. They found their “proof” in the theory of eugenics. The field of study was popular for 80 years until it was proved to be junk science.

It was finally killed in 2003 when the Human Genome Project (HGP)was completed. This huge task mapped all three billion bits of the chemical compounds that make up human beings.

HGP found that all humans are 99.9 percent genetically identical. The white farmer in Saskatchewan is 99.9 percent the same as the Black miner in South Africa, who is genetically almost indistinguishable from the factory worker in Shanghai.

(There are scientists who say the differences in genetic code may be higher; some suggest as much as one percent).

Geneticists are looking at the remaining 0.1 percent. The decoding of that tiny sliver is called the Haplotype Project, and it’s making those engaged in it a bit nervous.

The major goal of the project is to help determine what makes some people ill and others healthy. It’s beginning to look as though the clues to that are inside that 0.1 percent of each person’s genetic makeup.

Genetic Differences
For example, men in the Middle East tend to have heart attacks 10 years earlier than men in Europe. On the other hand, cystic fibrosis is far more common among Europeans than Africans.

The pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has produced a lung-cancer drug that didn’t work when given to Caucasians but seems to deliver better results when taken by Asians.

What causes concern is what else might show up in that tiny slice of DNA:

These are positive characteristics associated with distinct groups. But, what if negative traits turn out to be genetically based?

If that is the case, then noble goals might be used for ignoble purposes. As Carolyn Abraham pointed out in a feature article in The Globe and Mail (June 2005) “…any dramatic genetic differences that [the Haplotype] project discovered could end up stigmatizing their communities.”

A concern echoed by Dr. Tom Hudson of McGill University who is involved in the study: “There’s enough examples already of racism in the world…That there’s no doubt someone would try to use the information for genetic discrimination.”

It’s already happened. Steve Scherer is a geneticist at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. His research suggests that one ethnic group, for example, might have more or less of a particular gene-based characteristic than others.

The bigots pounced on this. Nazi websites now spin this research to bolster their hate messages. They’ve done the same thing with Haplotype research, claiming that it proves their beliefs in the supremacy of the white “race.”

Image credit
Murky1

Sources
“Race and the Human Genome.” Ari Patrinos, Nature Genetics, November 2004.
“The New Science of Race.” Carolyn Abraham, Globe and Mail, April 7, 2009.

© Canada and the World, July 2010
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Jimee, Jackie, Tom & Asha