In order to fully understand what the racism, it is necessary to know, first of all, that the word itself racismit has a relatively recent origin. She first appeared in an article published in a French magazine entitled Revue Blanche, in the year 1902. In the decades that followed, the term began to become popular in almost all European languages (English, Portuguese, Spanish, etc.), being used to denominate conceptions about superiority and inferiorityracial that began to be in force in Europe from the 19th century onwards.
In a short time, these concepts, which were approved by many scientists at the time, began to “justify” racist political actions in various parts of the world. Three examples can be given immediately (we will come back to them later): 1) the politics anti-Semitic (concerning the persecution of Jews - Semitic people) in Nazi Germany, which culminated in the burnt offering;2) O apartheid, in South Africa; 3) the laws of racial segregation in the southern United States of America.
What are the origins of racism?
Racism has an origin scientist, that is, it originated from certain theses of European scientists of the 19th century, above all physicians and anthropologists, who used their knowledge to elaborate doctrinesracial. One of the procedures used by these doctors consisted of measuring the size of the skull of individuals of different “races”. The larger skulls, which supposedly held more brain mass, were indicative of racial superiority. Another procedure was to analyze the physiognomic features (relating to human features, facial features), such as nose, lips, ears, eye color, to determine the degree of "racial purity" reached by a given race throughout the evolution of the men.
Many of these scientists were based on Darwinian theory of natural selection and species evolution (to learn more about it, click on here) and they believed that the same laws applicable to the evolution of living beings were also valid to describe a hierarchy of civilizations, the strongest being those constructed by superior races. Two of the greatest representatives of racist scientism were the French Arthur Gobineau It's the English Houston S. Chamberlain.
racism and politics
These racial doctrines came to be used to justify the imperialism Europe and the colonization of the African and Asian continents. These same doctrines remained in vogue in the first half of the 20th century in regimes like the Nazi, who developed policies of extermination of "inferior races" (the Jews, for example), as well as using individuals of that same "race" as guinea pigs for medical and military experiments
In South Africa, since the beginning of the formation of that country, whites of Dutch descent, known as Boers, developed racist policies against blacks who lived in the same region, also based on the thesis of white racial superiority. These policies intensified over the decades of the 20th century and ended up becoming part of the South African daily life, in what was called in the local language of apartheid, that is, “separate lives”.
Similarly, in the southern region of the United States, there were also policies aimed at separating blacks and whites in the occupation. of public spaces, as well as giving rights and privileges to whites and restricting the same type of rights and privileges to black people. These policies were also based on the theses of white racial superiority and generated many violent episodes, such as those practiced by the sect.Ku Klux Klan, founded after the end of American Civil War, in 1865, to chase and kill blacks in the southern states of the US.
racism in Brazil
In other regions of the world, such as Brazil, racism existed and still exists, but with a big difference for the examples mentioned above: in Brazil, there were never, after the abolition of slavery in 1888, laws (neither federal nor state) that segregated (separated and differentiated) blacks from whites. Racism, in Brazil, was never a State policy, as it was in the USA, for example.
Many authors from the turn of the 19th to the 20th century believed that the various outbreaks of disease that existed in the interior of Brazil were the result of the contamination of the black race on the white, which had resulted in the figure of the mestizo, anemic and sick. Monteiro Lobato, when he first elaborated his character "Jeca Armadillo", had that in mind. Then, with the beginning of sanitary research (medical research that had the mission of clarifying the transmission agents of diseases such as mosquitoes, rats, etc.), Lobato and several other writers and intellectuals abandoned the old racist conceptions.
Other authors like Gilberto Freyre, on the contrary, believed that the mixture of races in Brazil had contributed a lot not only to the formation of our nation, but also to prevent racist policies from having any bearing on on here.
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1PENNA, José Oswaldo da Meira. Polemos – A critical analysis of Darwinism. Brasília: Publisher of the University of Brasília, 2006. P. 371.
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
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