Suchergebnisse

Are antisemitism and white supremacy manifestations of a general phenomenon? Why didn't racism appear in Europe before the fourteenth century, and why did it flourish as never before in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Why did the twentieth century see institutionalized racism in its most extreme forms? Why are egalitarian societies particularly susceptible to virulent racism? What do apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, and the American South under Jim Crow have in common? How did the Holocaust advance civil rights in the United States? With a rare blend of learning, economy, and cutting insight, George Fredrickson surveys the history of Western racism from its emergence in the late Middle Ages to the present. Beginning with the medieval antisemitism that put Jews beyond the pale of humanity, he traces the spread of racist thinking in the wake of European expansionism and the beginnings of the African slave trade. And he examines how the Enlightenment and nineteenth-century romantic nationalism created a new intellectual context for debates over slavery and Jewish emancipation. Fredrickson then makes the first sustained comparison between the color-coded racism of nineteenth-century America and the antisemitic racism that appeared in Germany around the same time. He finds similarity enough to justify the common label but also major differences in the nature and functions of the stereotypes invoked. The book concludes with a provocative account of the rise and decline of the twentieth century's overtly racist regimes--the Jim Crow South, Nazi Germany, and apartheid South Africa--in the context of world historical developments. This illuminating work is the first to treat racism across such a sweep of history and geography. It is distinguished not only by its original comparison of modern racism's two most significant varieties--white supremacy and antisemitism--but also by its eminent readability

"The struggle against racism takes many forms: statues of Confederate heroes have been removed, Confederate-named schools have been renamed, and efforts to help minorities vote have been made. But despite these accomplishments in confronting racism, there is more work to be done. Removing statues and changing names are outward demonstrations of the fight against racism, but in the end, change must begin in the hearts of all Americans"--

The emergence of militant organizations or new political movements always seems rather strange and accidental : why do a number of movements generate particularly strong commitments and find numerous relays, whereas others find it difficult to make themselves known and widen their audience beyond the initial circle of their founders ? This thesis about SOS-Racism – a French antiracist movement founded in 1984 – originated from a question about the conditions of success in politics. Why, at that time, did a rather marginal group of students, gathering round Julien Dray, wish to found a new antiracist organization, a field they knew nothing about ? How were they able to reach such a quick success and what were the causes of their subsequent relative decline ? Moreover how can we explain that their mobilization took the form – discredited some years before – of an « apolitical » movement ? This thesis seeks to answer these questions by trying to link an interrogation about the political entrepreneurs' characteristics and motivations and an effort to understand the objective conditions of the success of their entreprise. First of all we studied the conditions in which SOS-Racism was founded. We had to understand how former extreme left militant students who considered they belonged to the left wing of the Socialist Party, could have imagined an organization labelled « apolitical ». We also had to explain how the founders of SOS had chosen to start their new association at that very moment though they already were members of several other partisan associations (PS-Socialist Party/MJS- Movement of Socialist Youth/UNEF-ID-National Union of the French students-independent and democratic). This thesis, originating from biographical interviews with the founder members (about twenty, plus fifty or so interviews with the officials and the militants of the organization) tends to show that the reasons leading to the creation of SOS-Racism came more from the minority position its founders had in the various associations they ...

"Racism, i.e. discrimination against people on the basis of their supposed ethnic origin, is omnipresent in schools. Apart from students, trainees and teachers, all actors in the school context are affected by this topic. Why is this so? How can racist discrimination be explained? What effects does this behavior have on those affected? And how can schools counteract it? These are all questions that arise and which this book aims to answer with the intention of enabling all those acting in the school context to critically examine their own knowledge bases relevant to racism. This book contributes to the development of school as a racism-sensitive space in which all actors behave in a racism-sensitive manner. Therefore, in addition to an overview of the history of racism, approaches to explaining racist behavior and the effects of racist discrimination, prevention and intervention approaches for a practice critical of racism in schools are presented"--