Racism, Prejudice, and Discrimination

The term "racism" gets thrown around so carelessly these days that many people may have forgotten that it has a specific meaning. Racism is the doctrine that members of one racial or ethnic group are intrinsically superior or inferior to members of another or others.  Racists are people who hold such opinions. Example include Nazis, Ku Kluxers, and members of some so-called black or white supremacy groups.

Racial prejudice  is the belief in and practice of judging people’s individual character and qualities on the basis of their race or ethnicity.  Examples would include holding  such opinions  as “all black men in big cities are brutal thugs”, “all Mexicans are dirty and lazy”, or “all Germans are still closet Nazis” or holding those opinions with the “all” only implicit.  

Racial discrimination is the act of deciding how and under what conditions  one wants to  associate or not with another person at least partially on the basis of his race.

These three things are different, and it is worthwhile to keep them separate. While one may assume all racists would be prejudiced, not all prejudiced people are racists.   Similarly it is likely that a prejudiced person would want to practice discrimination, but people can discriminate for pragmatic or other reasons different from the broad conclusions of racial prejudice.

Racism is dangerous. There are very good reasons for taking actual racism of any sort seriously and opposing it vigorously. Individual acts of discrimination are usually a person’s private business and  deserve only disapproval if any notice at all.  It helps to know the difference, and to do that one must first understand that there is a difference.   

It is also useful to remember that things such as telling an ethnic joke, using a taboo word, or mentioning a statistical datum such as “a higher percentage of black men than white men commit violent crimes” or “east-Asian Americans have higher average IQ test scores than white Americans” may not be instances of any of the three, depending on context and intent.