The phenomenon of racism and the concept of race: a transdisciplinary research

  • Olga V. Novikova Belarusian State University, 4 Niezaliežnasci Avenue, Minsk 220030, Belarus

Abstract

In recent decades, with development of scientific and philosophical knowledge, the transdisciplinary approach has become relevant, as it aims at comprehensive study of complex natural and social phenomena. Racism belongs among such phenomena, and it it is usually studied in sociology and historical science. The article presents a transdisciplinary study of racism, involving a complex appeal to philosophy, history, sociology, and other disciplines. Special attention is paid to the philosophical conceptualisation of racism and the relationship of racism with the category of race. The article follows the evolution of the concept of race in philosophy, science and social and political practices from its origins to the 20th and 21st centuries, when this concept is declared to be artificially constructed and is gradually ousted from philosophical and scientific discourse. Bioanthropologists criticise the concept of race as inaccurate, while intellectuals see racial classifications as a sign of racism. The difficulty of the conceptualisation is associated not only with the variability of the concept of race but also with the change in its historical types, from traditional to contemporary ones. Traditional (classical, biological) racism is based on the use of the category of race and the idea of insurmountable biological differences between representatives of different races. The article concludes that present-day racism exists in two forms: class (institutional) racism and cultural (differential or «subtle») racism. Class racism is associated with social and political practices of implicit segregation in employment and, accordingly, with unequal distribution of income. Cultural racism shifts the focus from biology to culture and emphasises the insurmountability of cultural differences.

Author Biography

Olga V. Novikova, Belarusian State University, 4 Niezaliežnasci Avenue, Minsk 220030, Belarus

PhD (philosophy), docent; associate professor at the department of philosophy and methodology of science, faculty of philosophy and social sciences

References

  1. Jackson JР, Weidman NМ. Race, racism, and science: social impact and interaction. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press; 2005. 424 p.
  2. Hegel GWF. Enciklopediya filosofskih nauk. Tom 3. Filosofiya duha [The encyclopedia of the philosophical sciences. Volume 3. The philosophy of spirit]. Sitkovskii EP, Kedrov BM, Rozental’ MM, editors. Moscow: Mysl’; 1977. 471 p. Russian.
  3. Balibar E, Wallersteinn I. Rasa, natsiya, klass. Dvusmyslennye identichnosti [Race, nation, class. Ambigious identities]. Glushchenko I, translator; Skopin D, Kagarlitskii B, Skuratov B, editors. Moscow: Logos-Al’tera; 2003. 272 p. Russian.
  4. Derrida J. tRACEs: race, deconstruction, and critical theory [Internet]. 2003 [cited 2021 September 13]. Available from: https://uchri.org/events/traces-race-deconstruction-and-critical-theory/.
  5. Sarich V, Miele F. Race. The reality of human differences. New York: Routledge; 2019. 304 р.
  6. Yudell M, Roberts D, DeSalle R, Tishkoff S. Taking race out of human genetics. Science Magazine. 2016;351:564–565.
  7. Isaak B. The Invention of racism in classical Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 2006. 592 р.
  8. Hochman A. Race and reference. Biology and Philosophy [Internet]. 2019 [cited 2021 August 12];34(2):32. Available from: https://philpapers.org/archive/HOCRAR-3.pdf.
  9. Hochman A. Janus-faced race: is race biological, social, or mythical? American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 2021;175(2):453–464.
  10. Shnirel’man VA. «Porog tolerantnosti»: ideologiya i praktika novogo rasizma. Tom 1 [The «threshold of tolerance»: ideology and practice of new racism. Volume 1]. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie; 2011. 576 p. Russian.
  11. Dyer R. White. London: Routledge; 2017. 304 р.
  12. Khanna N. «If you’re half black, you’re just black»: reflected appraisals and the persistence of the one-drop rule. The Sociological Quarterly. 2010;51(1):96–121.
  13. Fredrickson GM, Camarillo A. Racism: a short history. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 2015. 232 р.
  14. Mondry H. Censorship and intellectual freedom: reflections 30 years after Chernobyl and glasnost (1986–2016). Continental Thought & Theory. 2016;1:7–17.
  15. Weidinger B. Equal before God, and God alone: cultural fundamentalism, (anti-)egalitarianism, and Christian rhetoric in nativist discourse from Austria and the United States. Journal of Austrian-American History. 2017;1:40–68.
  16. Stolcke V. Talking culture: new boundaries, new rhetorics of exclusion in Europe. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. 2021;11(1):221–239.
  17. Ture K, Hamilton ChV. Black power. The politics of liberation in America. New York: Vintage Books; 1992. 256 р.
  18. Bonilla-Silva E. «Racists», «class anxieties», hegemonic racism, and democracy in Trump’s America. Social Currents. 2019;6(1):14–31.
  19. Fanon F. Toward the African revolution: political essays. New York: Groove Press; 1994. 208 р.
  20. Baudrillard J. Amerika [America]. Kalugin D, translator. Saint Petersburg: Vladimir Dal’; 2000. 208 p. Russian.
  21. Siebers H, Dennissen MH. Is it cultural racism? Discursive exclusion and oppression of migrants in the Netherlands. Current Sociology. 2015;63(3):470–489.
Published
2022-09-27
Keywords: social philosophy, philosophical anthropology, racial taxonomy, biological racism, class racism, cultural racism
How to Cite
Novikova, O. V. (2022). The phenomenon of racism and the concept of race: a transdisciplinary research. Journal of the Belarusian State University. Philosophy and Psychology, 3, 60-66. Retrieved from https://journals.bsu.by/index.php/philosophy/article/view/4689
Issue
No 3 (2022): Journal of the Belarusian State University. Philosophy and Psychology
Section
Social Researches

Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of the Belarusian State University. Philosophy and Psychology

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

The authors who are published in this journal agree to the following:

  1. The authors retain copyright on the work and provide the journal with the right of first publication of the work on condition of license Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial. 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
  2. The authors retain the right to enter into certain contractual agreements relating to the non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the work (e.g. post it on the institutional repository, publication in the book), with the reference to its original publication in this journal.
  3. The authors have the right to post their work on the Internet (e.g. on the institutional store or personal website) prior to and during the review process, conducted by the journal, as this may lead to a productive discussion and a large number of references to this work. (See The Effect of Open Access.)