Racism, Beyond Hate
Racism is often treated as a Moral pathology1 individual deviance or archaic residue to disappear with progress, education and modernity. This reading is not only insufficient, but misleading. Racism is not an anomaly of the social system; he is one of the ordinary modes of regulation. It is not reduced to insult or explicit violence: it is a Structural social report, a way of organising hierarchies, distributing places and making acceptable otherwise untenable inequalities.
Understanding racism therefore requires leaving the moral register to enter into an analysis psychological, sociological, economic and political, able to grasp its deep springs, contemporary transformations and functions that it performs for those who mobilize it, consciously or not.
Racism as a social relationship: prioritizing to stabilize
Historically, racism still appears in contexts of conquest, domination, exploitation or strong asymmetry of power. It is not the simple difference, but the necessity of justify inequality. Racial hierarchy transforms a historical power ratio into a natural difference. What was produced by violence, economy or politics is then re-read as biological, cultural or civilizational evidence.
In contemporary societies, racism has largely abandoned its explicit biological forms. He's reconfigured. He no longer says: « they are inferior by nature »but: « they are not compatible », « they have a problematic culture », « they refuse to integrate ». The vocabulary has changed, but the function remains the same: assigning groups to subordinate positions and making this assignment legitimate.
Racism is therefore not only an ideology; It's a social technology classification.
Decommissioning, spite and success of the other: the emotional motor of ordinary racism
One of the major areas of contemporary racism is the feeling of actual, relative or anticipated decommissioning. In contrast to a common idea, racism develops not only among the poorest, but among those who perceived a threat to their position, whether material, symbolic or identity.
When individuals from historically dominated groups reach previously reserved social, intellectual or economic positions, this rise is often experienced as a transgression of implicit order. It is not so much success in itself that disturbs what it reveals: the fragility of a hierarchy that was believed to be natural.
Racism then functions as a narcissistic defence mechanism. It allows us to reinterpret our own downgrading not as the product of complex economic or political dynamics, but as the consequence of legitimity of the other. Personal failure becomes bearable if it is attributed to an external injustice or to an "usurpation”.
But this dynamic is not just about the downgraded. It also crosses socially favoured groups in a more discreet form.
Two social racisms, one logic
In European companies, there is an apparent polarisation: on one side, on the other, on the socially vulnerable individualsexpressing racism virulent, explicit, emotional ; the other privileged individuals, often socially remote from minorities, demonstrating racism felted, cultivated, « respectable« .
This opposition is misleading. This is not about two contradictory racisms, but about two social styles of the same mechanism.
Among the downgraded popular classes, racism is a language of anger. It is frontal because it is not filtered by cultural capital. It expresses daily experience of competition, promiscuity, saturation of public services and political abandonment. This racism is noisy because it is lived in the body and in the immediate space.
Among the favored classes, racism is preventive. It aims to prevent future legalization, to preserve social reproduction and to maintain the scarcity of dominant positions. It is expressed by discourses on values, culture, compatibility, but also by avoidance practices: residential choices, school strategies, closed networks. This racism is silent, but often more effective.
In both cases, racism fulfils the same function: making inequality acceptable by transforming it into a difference.
Far right: when racism becomes a political agenda
Far right parties are not accidentally linked to racism; they need it structurally. Their vision of the world is based on a unequal anthropology : the idea that human societies must be hierarchical, homogeneous, disciplined, and that equality is a dangerous fiction.
Racism and xenophobia provide them with a triple political advantage. First, they allow build a clear and mobilising "we" by excluding a "they". They then offer scapegoat in crisis contexts, simplifying complex phenomena into emotional narratives. Finally, they transform vertical social conflict into a horizontal identity conflict, thus protecting existing economic structures.
The contemporary racism of the far right is rarely biological. It is civilizational, cultural, Security. But its effect is the same: legitimizing inequality of rights and restricting membership.
The colonial and post-colonial experience: the case of European expatriates in Africa
The attitude of social decline observed in many European expatriates in Africa: between oneself, low mix, essentially useful relations with indigenous people, is not a mere cultural preference. It is part of a deeply internalized colonial heritage.
Colonisation has established a spatial, social and symbolic separation between colonizers and colonized. After independence, this architecture does not disappear; She's privatizing herself. Secured residences, clubs, international schools, closed economic networks reproduce a radical social distance.
This withdrawal is not necessarily motivated by hatred, but by the fear of real equality. Egalitarian proximity exposes privilege, makes visible asymmetry, creates moral dissonance. The self then protects the meritocratic narrative of self.
When these expatriates return to Europe, the loss of symbolic centrality, social banalisation and confrontation with descendants of colonised people who have become full citizens can feed a ideological hardening. The far right vote becomes an attempt to symbolically restore a hierarchical order lived elsewhere.
Gender, education and racism: modulations, not antidotes
Women appear statistically less prone to explicit and violent racism than men. This difference is due less to a moral essence than to the differentiated socialisation and a more frequent experience of domination, promoting empathy. However, female racism exists, often in more discreet forms: child protection, cultural moralization, and silent avoidance.
Similarly, the overall level of education is negatively correlated biological and brutal racism. But education does not suppress racism; she on transform. It produces a more sophisticated racism, more euphemized, more difficult to identify, but often equally active in its effects.
Again, the decisive variable is not the diploma itself, but the position in the social order and perception of the threat.
Internalized racism and tension between dominated
Racism does not only circulate from top to bottom. The populations who are victims of this problem can, in turn, reproduce certain logics. This takes the form of Internalized racism, internal hierarchy, interminority conflicts.
These phenomena should not be confused with dominant structural racism. They are side effects. When dominated groups are competing for scarce resources, they can shift the vertical conflict to the horizontal. Racism then becomes a strategy of symbolic survival, an attempt to distinguish in a stigmatized universe.
To recognize this reality does not amount to relativizing racist domination; on the contrary, it reveals its depth and capacity for dissemination.
How to fight? The limits of the strategy by "superiority"
In the face of racism, a common temptation is to demonstrating the victim's intelligence, morality or excellence, and the absence of an objective basis for the alleged superiority of the racist. This strategy is understandable and sometimes necessary to defend itself. But she is structurally fragile.
In seeking to prove superiority, even in reverse, we implicitly accept the very principle of human hierarchy. It is suggested that dignity would be conditioned by performance. This excludes the most vulnerable, those who cannot or do not want to "proof" their value.
The most robust fight against racism is not to win a merit competition, but to refuse the very ground of comparison. It consists of dismantling the mechanisms of domination, revealing inconsistencies in racist reasoning, and asserting unconditional equality of dignity.
Racism, a system more than a vice
Racism persists because it is useful. He calms anxiety, stabilizes hierarchies, simplifies crises, mobilizes politically. It crosses classes, genders, educational levels, transforming itself according to contexts.
Combating it therefore requires more than moral indignation. This implies that Structural lucidity, attention to ordinary practices, and constant rejection of banality. On an individual scale, the struggle is about coherence and consistency; At the collective level, it is inseparable from reducing real inequalities.
For as long as equality remains proclaimed but not lived, racism will continue to provide many with a convenient explanation of what the world refuses them.
