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Racism represents one of the most striking and horrific ideologies denying human equality. From the second half of the nineteenth century until the end of World War II it was a power influence in European and American societies, which then ruled the world through colonial empires.
Racism was not merely an ideology of hatred of others, it claimed the inherent division of humanity into separate “races”. It was justified by sciences such as Eugenics, Race Science and Social Darwinism. In its most extreme form it culminated the programs of racial extermination known as the Holocaust.
Like slavery and the oppression of women, though greater in scale, it imposed unimaginable human suffering.
In contrast to the former two examples, it was the very excesses of racism in its Nazi manifestation that laid the foundations for its collapse.
A direct response to the ideology embodied in Nazism and its racist predecessors was the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, one of the most influential documents in history.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 1, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The denial of equality in the form of foreignness does not explicitly sanction the death, exclusion or oppression of people as racism did, foreignness simply allows it to occur.
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