Racism in its more rigorous usage denotes a complex process of collective injustice whereby one group of people effectively enforces upon another group of people a system of social subordination and economic exploitation.
Although the term has been developed to specifically address relations between groups distinguished by racialized traits, which are ultimately arbitrary, the dynamics of racism also offer invaluable first approximations for modeling collective oppression as such. Historically, movements against racism, such as slavery abolition, antiapartheid, or civil rights, have inspired forms of analysis that have been applied to sexism, heterosexism, ableism, and other global systems of collective injustice.
To assert that racialized traits are ultimately arbitrary is not to deny that the processes of selection, codification, and socialization of the traits can have profound historical significance. The historical development of arbitrary traits into significant markers of...
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Authors and Affiliations
Department of Philosophy, St. Edwards University, Austin, TX, USA
Greg Moses
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Department of Philosophy, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Deen K. Chatterjee
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© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.