Racism and the Western Tradition

The revolution in expectations, carburetor of the engine of change now roaring through Asia, Africa, and Latin America, owes much in precept and example to the United States, the classic land of the common man. It is therefore altogether fitting that the final assault on the last important stronghold of colonialism-that which exists within the nation and rests on race-should occur in America. For the American Negro the affluent has also been the closed society. His awakening to new and great expectations marks the end of an era, an era through which racism coursed black, broad, and mighty, like the Mississippi on a moonless night. Gaetano Salvemini, the great Italian historian, once remarked that "the historical sense is a kind of sixth sense which we cannot fail to acquire as we breathe the intellectual atmosphere of our times." 1 Salvemini was undoubtedly right, the XXth century is the most historically minded of all the centuries. Perhaps this is so because with us the present is almost unendurable and the future quite uncertain. Yet, unlike other dominant ideological forces in modern society, such as nationalism and even socialism, racism is more often viewed sociologically than historically. It might be useful to consider how and in what circumstances this fateful idea first arose, attained a Mephistophelian respectability, and fell into discredit. Racism rests on two basic assumptions: that a correlation exists between physical characteristics and moral qualities; that mankind is divisible into superior and inferior stocks. Racism, thus defined, is a modern conception, for prior to the XVIth century there was virtually nothing in the life and thought of the West that can be described as racist. To prevent misunderstanding a clear distinction must be made between racism and ethnocentrism. The term ethnocentrism-of comparatively recent coinage-is derived from the Greek. While ethnos meaning race or nation and ethos meaning character or tradition are related words, ethnocentrism serves to describe the identification of oneself with one's own people as against the rest of mankind, indiscriminately. The ancient Hebrews, in referring to all who were not Hebrews as Gentiles, were indulging in ethnocentrism, not in racism. For there was nothing in their attitude to suggest that they believed that a relationship existed between physical characteristics and moral qualities. So it was with the Hellenes who denominated all non-Hellenes-whether the wild Scythians or the Egyptians whom they acknowledged as their mentors in the arts of civilization-Barbarians, the term denoting that which was strange or foreign.