The Africans’ “Place in Nature”

Abstract

The terms “racism” and “racist” have become highly emotive since the 1930’s, when a special variety of racism was taken up and carried to power in Germany by the National Socialist Party. The atrocities committed during the 1940’s in the name of pseudo-scientific racism give special overtones to any discussion of the history of Western thought about race differences. Race prejudice, racial consciousness, and racism can mean many things. At one level, there is the simple and unavoidable fact that major racial differences are recognizable. In every racially mixed society, in every contact between people who differ in physical appearance, there has always been instant recognition of race: it was the first determinant of inter-group social relations.