NCJ Number
180057
Journal
Sociological Spectrum Volume: 4 Issue: 19 Dated: October-December 1999 Pages: 467-484
Editor(s)
Jay Corzine,
Tom Calhoun
Date Published
1999
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This article explores the concept of global racism in terms of its centrality to systems of oppression and argues that antiracist action ties the everyday confrontation with racism to the global confrontation with racism and makes each confrontation and everyday struggle against racism part of a global struggle against global racism.
Abstract
The concept of global racism provides a theoretical base on which to examine the everyday, the global, the historical, and spatial connections and is integral to developing a framework for understanding antiracism efforts. The globalization of racism is a manifestation of capitalist expansion and colonialism. Colonialism and the accompanying violent division of people into categories of superior and inferior established global racism, destroying lives and communities, knowledge of self and the other, and understanding of the past and the future. Global racism is a process rather than a product that permeates economic, political, social, and cultural production, distribution, and consumption. Racial violence that once built colonial empires is now essential to the technocratic ideology of liberal modernism of the capitalist nation. Saturation of global racism on the everyday and global level requires the integration of antiracist practice into everyday life as well, sometimes even without the benefit of organization or resources. Mass graves in Kosovo and genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Chechnya all exemplify global racism. Antiracist efforts need to address these situations as well as inadequate inner-city schools for minorities, workplace discrimination and harassment, segregated neighborhoods, environmental racism, absence of health care policies, and the prison-industrial complex for minorities. 51 references (Author abstract modified)