THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF RACISM AND RACIAL DISCRIMINATION

Abstract

Since 1971 United Nations resolutions have referred to racism without distinguishing it from racial discrimination. Racism is presented as historically and geographically specific, and as pathological, whereas discrimination is universal and normal. The concept of racism has been of great rhetorical power in mobilising international action for political change in Southern Africa. It has helped induce more than three-quarters of UN member states to become parties to the `International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination'. Antidiscrimination laws are designed to protect particular classes of people in particular social spheres from actions which have either the purpose or the effect of impairing the exercise of their human rights. These laws have developed rapidly in the last twenty-five years, but their relevance to sociological analysis is not yet appreciated. Since policies to reduce discrimination are based on diagnoses, implicit or explicit, of the causes of the behaviour that is to be modified, it is important to improve communication between sociologists and human rights lawyers.