Introduction

• In 1601, Queen Elizabeth I issued a proclamation stating that ‘Negroes and blackamoors’ should be deported from England due to being ‘infidels’ and contributing to economic and social problems like poverty and famine.
• In the 18th century, about 9.5 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic to become slaves in the Americas.
• John Taylor described black slaves in Jamaica as ‘ignorant pore souls’, comparing them unfavorably to brute beasts.
• In 1884, the Encyclopaedia Britannica continued to express racist views, claiming that the African ‘Negro’ occupied the lowest evolutionary position, with physical traits like long arms and lightweight brains used as evidence.
• In 19th-century Britain, the Irish were viewed as inferior, with Frederick Engels describing their working-class conditions.
• In 1901, Joseph Bannister criticized Jews in his book, describing them as ‘Yiddish money pigs’ and unclean, accusing them of dominating Britain.
• In Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler promoted the idea of a racially pure Aryan master race, targeting Jews, Slavs, and others as inferior races.
• The Nuremberg Laws (1935) stripped Jews of their civil rights and forbade mixed marriages with Aryans.
• The ‘Final Solution’ involved gassing millions of Jews and other groups, including gypsies and homosexuals, in concentration camps.
• In the 1990s, after the breakup of Yugoslavia, ethnic conflict erupted, particularly between Bosnian Serbs, Muslims, and Croatians, leading to ethnic cleansing.
• In Kosovo, Serbia engaged in ethnic cleansing against ethnic Albanians, displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
• NATO intervened militarily against Serbia in response to ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
• Conflicts between Catholics and Protestants continue in Northern Ireland despite the Good Friday Agreement.
• The Sri Lankan civil war between Tamils and Sinhalese lasted 26 years, ending in 2009.
• In Spain, the Basques have sought independence, and in East Timor, guerilla leaders fought for independence from Indonesia.
• In Burundi and Rwanda, long-standing conflict between the Hutus and Tutsis led to genocide, with thousands of Tutsis killed by the Hutus in 1994.
• In Nigeria, Boko Haram militants attacked Christians, advocating for the establishment of an Islamic state.
• In Iraq (2003 onwards), sectarian violence broke out between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, with violence continuing into the 2010s.
• In Britain, racially motivated attacks against British Asians and African Caribbeans continue, evidenced by riots in 2001 and continued attacks on asylum seekers.
• A 2010 report highlighted 77 deaths of migrants and asylum seekers in the UK due to racist immigration policies.
• After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Arabs and Muslims (and those mistaken for them) faced racial attacks in places like Arizona and New York.
• In Europe, extreme right-wing parties like the British National Party, National Front, and Front National have gained support, focusing on immigration and blaming minorities for social problems.
• In the USA, black and Hispanic populations continue to face disadvantage in employment and education, with black males being disproportionately represented in prison.
• Racial, ethnic, and national conflicts persist globally, driven by issues like biological differences, migration, cultural identity, racism, and nationalism.
• Many sociologists believe ethnicity, migration, nationality, and racism are closely connected and interrelated.

Race

• Stephen Sinclair notes that ‘race’ is a problematic term that is debated, reviled, and contested, yet remains widely used in Western cultural history.
• Many thinkers reject the concept of ‘race’, but Sinclair argues it continues to be used, particularly in places like Malaysia and the USA, where it is preferred over ‘ethnicity’.
• Biological theories of ‘race’ aim to establish a relationship between phenotype (physical traits like hair and skin color) and genotype (underlying genetic differences between groups).
• Scientific debate exists over whether there is any valid basis for distinguishing so-called ‘races’.
• Michael Banton (1987) identified three main types of theories about ‘race’: lineage, type, and subspecies.
• The word ‘race’ was first used in English in 1508 in a poem by William Dunbar, with biblical teachings influencing ideas about racial differences.
• The early concept of ‘race’ was based on a monogenesist view, which argued that all humans came from a single species with a common origin.
• It was believed that as humans spread across the world, distinctive lineages developed based on physical appearance and geographical origin, guided by God.
• The idea of ‘race’ as lineage suggested that all humans were essentially equal, but some believed God made people different to suit specific environments.
• For example, many thought only Africans could effectively work in the extreme heat of the tropics.
• Banton argued that the idea was that each group was adapted to its own environment, which led to the belief that people should remain where they were.
• In the 17th and 18th centuries, British and American writers rarely used the word ‘race’.
• By the 19th century, a new approach to classifying human groups gained popularity.