A racist is a person who is convinced of the physical and mental superiority of some races over others and that these differences are decisive in the cultural and historical achievements of various peoples.
Racism in the modern world
In the modern world, where the most progressive part of the community stands for democratic principles, the idea of pluralism of opinions and views is also popular. This means that any opinion, interpretation of the historical process, political movement and other products of human thought have the right to exist and uphold their own positions by legal means. In the political sphere of states declaring a democratic system and power, this presupposes peaceful coexistence of parties and movements of various kinds in it. However, it is extremely important that pluralism and tolerance cannot be extended to hateful views in any way. In this sense, “racist” is an unambiguously negative definition, and people who call for discrimination against persons with a different skin color (eye contraction) or, moreover, for unlawful acts against them, should definitely answer before the law.
History of racism
The opinion that representatives of different human races are unequal in their abilities appeared a very long time ago. And, in fact, it was born more than once, as soon as representatives of various civilizations met with pronounced external differences. However, for a long time, racism did not take shape in any significant philosophy for the reasons that, firstly, there was no particular dominance of representatives of one race over another, and secondly, there was simply no need for it. It arose only in the era of colonialism and the mass conversion by Europeans of the inhabitants of the African continent into their slaves. Such a practice should have been justified in the eyes of the public, and indeed the slaveholders themselves. First of all, this justification was found in the Bible, in the story of Noah's damned descendants of Ham - supposedly the very Africans. The first racist from science is the Frenchman Joseph Gobino. This man in the middle of the XIX century became the founder of the scientific justification of the inequality of human races. His ideology was based on practical observations of how far Europe has gone in its development of this time - economic, military, cultural and political - from the civilizations of other continents. According to Gobino, this was due to the initial advantage of the so-called Nordic race in intellectual abilities.
On the whole, the second half of the XIX and the first half of the XX century became the time of the theoretical foundation and flourishing of racism. In the 1860-1870s, after the abolition of official slavery in the United States, racism flourishes here in the midst of demobilized soldiers and officers of the southern army. The American racist appears before us in white robes and with a cap. Representatives of the Ku Klux Klan due to the scope of their activities have become one of the main symbols of this movement. However, the most famous representative and ideologist of the belief that the inferiority of certain races and peoples is inferior is Adolf Hitler. Unfortunately, modern ultrapatriots in Russia, persistent in their ignorance, continue to use the symbols of the NSDAP, despite the fact that the Slavic clan was also considered inferior by the Nazis. As an extremely weak counterargument, Russian racists cite excerpts from speeches by German officers flirting with local collaborators and sometimes saying what they wanted to hear. However, even after the defeat of National Socialist Germany, racism continued to live in some parts of the world for a long time. So, in the Republic of South Africa of apartheid times, a racist is not an abusive designation at all. But apartheid existed until the 1990s.
