RACIAL
DISCRIMINATION
•THE AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
•THE APARTHEID SYSTEM IN SOUTH AFRICA
•THE HOLOCAUST
RACISM:
attitude that subordinates an individual or a group
because of their skin colour or racial origin
Individual
Institutional
Procedures in all sectors:
Education
Housing
Employment
Religion
media
INSTITUTIONAL RACISM
TO PERPETUATE AND MAINTAIN
POWER
OF
one group
over
another group
How is power obtained from the
prevailing group?
• EXPLOITATION AND OPPRESSION
POWER
HOW IS EXPLOITATION
JUSTIFIED?
DEHUMANIZING THE OTHER GROUP
INFERIOR
It is right to persecute it
(hate, kill, enslave)
How is racial superiority made
credible?
a science was introduced
Some people are
genetically
superior to others
APARTHEID
the state of
being apart
1948
First use with a
political
meaning
National Party won
the general elections
Idea transformed in
a legislative system
Two manifestations of apartheid
• 1. Separation of the whites from the blacks
in the areas inhabited by both
• 2. Introduction of bantustans: semiindependent territories where the blacks
were forced to live
South African population
• 80% of people were black or of mixed
races
• . 20% of people were descendants of
former British colonisers and afrikaners
(the majority of the whites)
South African population
• 80% of people were black or of mixed
races
• . 20% of people were descendants of
former British colonisers and afrikaners
(the majority of the whites)
South African population
• 80% of people were
black or of mixed
races
• 20% of people were
descendants of former
British colonisers
and afrikaners (the
majority of the
whites)
more
tolerant
in favour of a
racist policy
GRADUAL INTRODUCTION OF
APARTHEID
• 1923
First elements of racial
segregation
World War 2
Give various racial
groups the possibility
to lead their own
social development
according to their own
traditions
Afrikaners
influenced by
nazism
completed the
project of
apartheid
1956 : apartheid was extended to coloured citizens
(Asian included)
1960’s : 3,5 millions of black africans were evicted
from their homes and deported to homelands
black and white as well organized protests which were
brutally repressed by the Government forces
1990’s President Frederick Willelm de Klerke began
negotioation tyo end apartheid culminating in
multiracial democratic elections in 1994
1994: elections were won by African National
Congress under Nelson Mandela
END OF APARTHEID IS WIDELY REGARDED AS
ARISING FROM THE 1994 DEMOCRATIC
GENERAL ELECTIONS
END OF APARTHEID
IS WIDELY REGARDED AS ARISING FROM THE
1994 DEMOCRATIC GENERAL ELECTIONS
THE HOLOCAUST
•started in the post-war period
when the Nazi party grew to
become the most powerful party in
Germany
•gradually developed over time and
implemented in every territory in
Germany
Antisemitism: a major
component in Nazi ideology
Jews = subhumans, parasites
destruction of the
world
elimination
Jews had left Palestine in
the 1st century
•They had taken up the nationality of
the country they grew up in.
•They had lived in Europe for 2,000
years.
•They had met with racist hostility
and persecution.
PC:
End of 19th century they wanted to emigrate
to Palestine (home of the Arab Palestinians)
Complications
1920’s anti-Semitism from the Nazi Party
1933: Adolf Hitler came to power and gradually
passed laws depriving them of their human rights
after 1939: Nazis organised a systematic
programme to deprive them of their lives
extermination
through death
squads
1930’s
many Jews escaped from
Germany and looked for refuge
abroad
Kindly received at first but as war
approached many countries were
reluctant to take them
immigration was
difficult
THE MOST EXTREME PHASE OF
ANTI-JEWISH POLICY
1941: attack on the Soviet Union
conceived as a battle against Bolshevism.
Einsatzgruppen assisted by reserve
battalions of the German police
gathered Jews
and shot them
annihilated entire
communities
in eastern parts of
Europe
German Jews the first to be
deported
• October 1941 to concentration camps in
Poland
Lodzo, Warsaw
In Soviet
territories:
Riga, Kovno,
Minsk
Gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war were
murdered in concentration camps as well