How to Think about Racism: the colonial paradigm and historical sociology

Abstract

The predominant interpretations of racismo today are located within what I call the “colonial paradigm,” which is the idea that racism originated from the colonial expansion of Europe and the domination of Europeans over the peoples of the rest of the world. Several empirical cases of racial domination or genocide present challenges for this approach, especially the racialization of European peoples by other Europeans and racism practiced by non-European peoples. The article develops the argument that many such cases can be understood within an expanded version of the colonial paradigm, emphasizing the subordination of peoples of the European periphery, the expansion of empires over the contiguous lands of other peoples, the conquest of colonial empires by some non-European countries, or forms of internal colonialism. However, other instances of racism cannot be explained within the colonial paradigm, for example European antisemitism or racism against Romani peoples (“gypsies”), which already existed prior to the imperial expansion of Europe, or cases of racial domination or extermination carried out by colonized peoples against other colonized peoples. The article develops the argument that racism should be understood as the systematic domination of one people, or ethnic group, by another, in conjunction with an ideology essencializing the subordinate group as intrinsically inferior. European expansion is the principal force behind racism in the modern world, but it is not the only origin of racism.