Thanks to Aoife Tobin for this article.

The concept of ‘race’ is a relatively new one. In a backdrop of New World exploration, and academic discussion over whether indigenous peoples, such as Native Americans, were to be considered inferior (and thus deserving of conquest, rather than trade), Francois Bernier published “A New Division of the Earth”, in 1684. Bernier was a traveller, and based upon his explorations of places including India, Persia an Egypt, he devised a division of humanity into “four or five species or races of men in particular whose difference is so remarkable that it may be properly made use of as the foundation for a new division of the earth”. This is the earliest record of a concept of ‘race’ based upon physical characteristics. His split up of the ‘races’ isn’t exactly what we’d agree with today, as he did it not based upon skin colour, but his perceptions of other physical features.

The ‘races’ covered certain areas: the first was Europe and North Africa, extending into the Middle East, and across Northern India; the second was Sub-Saharan Africa; the third was East Asia, including what is now China, and central Asian countries such as Mongolia and Uzbekistan, and Eastern Russia and Siberia, and the fourth was Northern Scandinavia. At first he considered whether the Native Americans were a distinct fifth ‘race’, but eventually lumped them in with the first group.  Bernier’s theory wasn’t particularly scientific, and came across more as an observation than something with scientific rigor, but it did open the idea of ‘races’. When more academics of the time got involved, it started a split in ideology between those who believed in monogenesis, that we are all descended from a common ancestor (like Adam) and thus all have being human in common, and those who believed in polygenesis, that different ‘races’ have different ancestral roots, and are thus different species from each other.

Into this came David Hume, in his 1745 work “Of National Characters”, a book that said the differences between Europeans were all culturally based, and in which he noted “I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation”. Now, these days we know this to be completely untrue, as there were many huge, complex and advanced civilisations all over the globe, many of which were more advanced at their peak than the contemporary ‘West’. (for some additional information I thoroughly recommend the series currently playing on the BBC “The lost kingdoms of Africa” http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pv1m4 ).

There were around this time people getting it closer to what we know scientifically today, such as Kant in 1775, when he suggested in his essay “Of the Different Human Races,” that we all had a common root (though he thought it started in Europe), and that the differences in what he considered to be four races had come about as a response to environmental factors such as heat and humidity. Unfortunately, despite good early ‘race’ theories like Kant’s, polygenesis theories were beginning to take hold as viable and respectable theory in ‘race’ studies, particularly in America (in the 1800s, notably the American School of Anthropology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science entertained the polygenesis theory).

One of the primary problems coming out of the polygenesis theory, aside from the idea that we are fundamentally different rather than mostly the same, was the idea of white supremacy. Arthur de Gobineau wrote an piece in 1853 entitled “Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races”, and in this laid out how the white race was responsible for civilisation, and that race mixing would cause a degeneration of the white race because of the decline in the quality of the blood, to keep the white race alive and powerful he thought it was essential to avoid mixing with the ‘lower races’. This of course came in very handy when justifying slavery.

In 1871 Darwin came along with The Descent of Man, and for the most part put to rest the idea of polygenesis. Unfortunately the concept of white supremacy remained, and with the new rhetorical weapon, to be misused, of natural selection. And with the ideas of natural selection, evolution, and race mixing, along came eugenics. Houston Stewart Chamberlain started looking back at creation of western civilisations, at the end of the 18th century. He decided that the successes of western civilisation were influenced by its Aryan stock. He stated that Ancient Greeks were Aryan, and Jesus was an Aryan Phoenician, not a Semitic Jew. He saw Aristotle’s division between Greeks and Barbarians (these days thought to be a division primarily on how they ran politics) as a division between Aryans and non-Aryans. He felt the Teutonic Germans were the pinnacle of Aryans and that the diametric opposite was the Semitic Jew, and that religious tensions between Christians and Jews in Europe were actually racial clashes and as such conversions or ecumenical solutions could never work. Unsurprisingly, this ended badly, with anti-Semitism rising throughout Europe and the Holocaust perpetrated by Hitler’s Nazi Party being it’s most extreme manifestation.

Similarly to how Chamberlain gave intellectual credence to German racial prejudice, at the same time in America the work of Madison Grant was providing foundations for racist lawmaking against ‘blacks’ and Native Americans. Grant wrote in 1916 advocating strict segregation and prohibition of miscegenation (interbreeding); anti-miscegenation laws were enforced in 30 states in America, and only finally overturned in 1967. However, at roughly the same time, the first academic chips at the scientific notion of ‘race’ were being made. Previously one of the ‘scientific’ reasoning behind racial differences had been the differences in average skull size, and the smaller skulls in non-European ‘races’ being said to be indicative of weaker mental capacity. Well anthropologist Franz Boas had been measuring craniums, and noticed that American-born children of various ‘racial types’ had markedly larger craniums than their parents, and realised that what had been put down to fundamental racial difference, was actually more to do with environment, and in particular, differing access to good nutrition throughout development.

Boas had started something, and more anthropologists were looking into how we define what a race is. In the 1940s, Ashley Montagu figured it out. Looking at what we know of genetics, Montague rejected the grouping of races by what we see on the surface, and insisted that genetics were the important thing. The morphological traits we associate with race were just the end result of a variety of genetic changes, some of which we see on the surface, but many of which we don’t. Dark skin or blond hair may be either the result of genetic mixture, or genetic mutation, and the cause may well be different from one person to the next, even if all their racial ‘markers’ are the same. Two people might look pretty much the same; say both have dark skin, brown eyes, and dark curly hair; science had previously explained this by saying they were the same ‘race’ – ‘black’. However they speak entirely different unrelated languages, are particularly susceptible to different diseases, have no recent common ancestors, and different cultural practises and traditions. Science now knows that what caused the similar features to be present in these two people may not be the same, and that genetically they can be very different from each other. They have as much in common on a genetic level with each other, than they would with somebody who appeared ‘racially different’ to them. Thus to make any judgement or generalisation about their behaviour or characteristics or nature as if they were the same is deeply flawed. Montagu's efforts eventually resulted in the publication of an official statement denying the biological foundations of race by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1950.

So this theory that race has no biological basis is far from new-fangled PC-nonsense. It’s just that it hasn’t been acknowledged much outside academia. In 2002 Naomi Zack, a geneticist worked through all the traditional groundings for ‘race’ and proved each of them completely false. Examples include: the descriptive terms such as ‘black’ or ‘white’ are incredible inaccurate, differences in skin tone are gradual, not discrete; genetic factors such as blood type work independently of ‘racial characteristics’ – genes are not passed down wholesale as a ‘race’ package; populations descended from a common ancestor may have common genetic characteristics, but these need not correlate with the visible traits associated with races.
So where are we today? This is where the problem of determining what is ‘racist’ comes up. When people hear the term ‘racism’, they often instantly think of what is called ‘racial naturalism’, the old-style biological concept of race as inheritable, biological features, shared by the members of a race, which explain behavioural, characteristic, and cultural predispositions of the individuals within a racial group. They think of slavery and Hitler, and feel that is what they are being equated to.

But that isn’t the only concept of race and racism today. Though it’s not simple either... there are those that are ‘racial sceptics’, who believe that as biological races do not exist, then races of any type do not exist, and we should just throw out the entire theory of race. Leaving what to call people who make a generalisation or implication on the basis of race a bit awkward. Generally these ‘racial sceptics’ would equate any modern racial judgements as the tail-end of racial naturalism, and thus use the term ‘racist’ to refer to those old-style false-science beliefs.

But there are many people who don’t believe in the old-style ‘racial differences’, and would be very offended at the accusation that they do, but who still come out with these sweeping judgements of entire groups in a way that is very similar to traditional racism (more on the similarities to come). This is where ‘racial constructionism’ comes into it. ‘Race’ is something we have created as an idea, with no real basis in science. However, it is also embraced by some of those who it has been used against – when society has historically labelled a group of people, they take on that label as part of their identity. Society is still grouping people according to genetically insignificant physical traits, and in doing so is creating a sense of something shared between members of those groups, which has no basis beyond the experience of having been treated as a member of a group. For example, if your appearance means society has designated you as ‘black’, then you are more likely to be stopped and searched by the police, creating a shared experience with other ‘blacks’.

We also find the ‘racialisation’ of pan-ethnic groups (ethnicity is more concerned with shared culture, language, history and tradition, rather than appearance), the lumping together of people under some concept of them being one homogenous group, usually based upon loose geographic and physical similarities. One example is that of ‘Hispanic’ – a term used to combine people originating from countries all over South America, and of very different genetic and ethnic backgrounds (Brazil, for instance, has a hugely diverse genetically mixed population, so their concepts of ‘race’ are very different from those in the UK and America and are pretty much related to just what shade of ‘brown’ you are). So we have this diverse group, and we’re calling them all Hispanic. Then comes further racialisation, with the idea of being ‘Hispanic-looking’, and even further racialisation the second somebody makes a behavioural generalisation about ‘Hispanics’ ( see http://www.rsdb.org/search?q=hispanics for some examples). And so it is complete, whilst it is obvious that ‘Hispanic’ is not a ‘race’, and there is no biological basis for even having that grouping, let alone for presuming common behaviours or tendencies, we know that the same is true for ‘blacks’ or ‘whites’. So what makes it different from racism? Nothing really, just that we call modern occurrences (in the ‘post-racial’ era, since we figured out that ‘race’ doesn’t exist) ‘racialisation’ instead of ‘racism’ as it’s a more accurate term.

Where does Islam fit into this? Well it has been argued by many in the last 10 years that Islam has been racialised. It has happened in much the same way as the racialisation of Judaism (somebody can ‘look’ Jewish, and there’s racialised characteristics such as hording money, swindling people, big noses, dirtiness etc). Part of the problem, I think, is that there’s no satisfactory term for anti-Islam racialisations. When using ‘Islamophobia’, the response is often “I’m not scared of Muslims” (the same happens with the term ‘homophobia’), as it is often not about fear, but a disgust or hatred, or even just a sense that Muslims are so completely different as to be incompatible with the UK. In the case of Judaism, we have ‘anti-semitism’, and though as a linguist, I’d say that term has some fairly obvious flaws, it is well-known enough in its meaning to work and be accepted as a form of discrimination (and at least an element of racism is usually accepted here too). Racialisation in this way can also be observed in the way that until recent years Jews and the Irish were both considered somehow ‘less white’ than other ‘whites’, and were discriminated against in the same way as more obvious ‘non whites’.

This racialisation of Islam (and Judaism), is not particularly about the concept of them as an inferior ‘race’, as it was with ‘blacks’, but it is about an antipathy towards the group, a bigotry and hostility towards people because they are part of this supposedly physically identifiable group. The traits associated with Islam are often those we have seen in 'classic racism' that they are dirty, promiscuous, licentious, violent and so forth. These are almost common characteristics in racialised groups, and racist epithets. The racialisation of Islam embodies all those that follow it, and ascribes them negative characteristics, that are seen as intrinsically connected to having that religion, and as immutable as skin colour. Racialising Islam is also about how you can be a Muslim but not ‘look like’ a Muslim, and you can ‘look like’ a Muslim, but not be one. The entire concept that there is a Muslim ‘look’ (which can be testified to by anybody who’s received different treatment because of the assumption they are Muslim), is a racialised concept.

Karim (America’s Media Coverage of Muslims: The Historical Roots of Contemporary Portrayals’, 2006) describes four primary representations of Muslims in the media: “having fabulous but underserved wealth”, “being barbaric and aggressive, indulging in sexual excess and the most persistent image of ‘the violent Muslim’”. This twinned with racial profiling at airports for example, and a common sense of thinking one can identify a Muslim by appearance or visual clues means they are thought of as a homogeneous group, just as 'blacks' were. It brings things we know, or think we know, about Islam, and cultures in Islamic countries and peoples, and gives it an essence of nature. That Muslims are 'just like that', rather than a very diverse group with no common feature beside Islam (and even then, different branches and practices).

So making a sweeping judgement against Islam or Muslims is wrong for the same reasons that a sweeping judgement against 'black' people or 'white' people would be, and so on that basis is formed in the same way as racism and there is no significant difference between the two.

There’s a good description of this racialisation at this blog http://www.racialicious.com/2008/10/02/casting-out-exploring-the-racialization-of-muslims/

As a final point on race, racism and Islamophobia, I hope it’s clear that certain judgements and statements about Muslims are racialised, or in common parlance ‘racist’. That the experience of discrimination faced by many Muslims is of the same nature as the discrimination faced by ‘blacks’ and Jews. Sometimes when people make a generalisation or sweeping statement about Muslims or Islam, somebody else will (correctly) jump in to point out the pseudo-racial basis for that statement and thus its inaccuracy. This doesn’t however mean that the person who made the statement is evil, or supports segregation or slavery, or believes that some ‘races’ are worse than others. What it usually means is that they are ill-informed or mis-informed, scared, and not considering the wider social and historical implications and roots of their statement. It doesn’t necessarily mean they are a bad person. I think that in many cases statements and beliefs are ‘racist’ but people saying and believing those things might not be. In addition to this, to have a ‘racist’ belief, does not mean you have all ‘racist’ beliefs; you can have ‘black’ friends and still be racist against another group, you can know “an okay Muslim” but still harbour racialised prejudices against “the rest of them”, and you can be a perceived ‘race’ other than ‘white’ and hold ‘racist’ views. Of course a ‘black’ person who says “I hate Pakis” is being racist, but equally it doesn’t mean that feels the same about his own ‘black race’. Racism is not binary, it’s not on or off; quite often it is much more subtle. But is it still very important to challenge racism and racialisations, as they are wrong and harmful to our society.


And even if you reject all this as bunkum; what would make it any better to discriminate against a group of people on the basis of their religion than on the basis of their race? The common retort is “Islam isn’t a race”, as if that makes hatred and bigotry okay. Even if you shun all the modern post-racial thinking on identity and racialisation, you should still ask yourself what the difference is as hatred is still hatred, bigotry is still bigotry, and either way it’s very very wrong.