Racism In Three Dimensions: A Critical-Realist Aproach

Abstract

In the light of the proliferation of sociological researches about racism, its roots, dynamics and social consequences, it is possible to perceive that they still lack at least an operational definition to the term. There is a great disagreement about which social dimensions are related to racism, despite the distinct political connotation and contexts that this term assumes historically and contextually. Some definitions of racism are: 1) as a doctrine, ideology or set of ideas; 2) as a set of attitudes, practices, and more or less unconsidered behaviors; 3) as a feature of social structures, systems or institutions. This article suggests that such divergences arise from partial perspectives about the social, and that empirical researches about racism have much to gain with an analytical integration of the ideological, practical and structural dimensions. However, it is necessary to integrate these three dimensions without modifying them analytically, that is, without ascribing the precedence of one to the others, in order to perceive the complexity of this phenomenon and especially of the public politics created to mitigate it. From this comes the value of a realistic and critical definition of racism as a tridimensional phenomenon.