Racism and Anti-Racism in the World – Review

Kathleen Brush. Racism and Anti-Racisim in the World: Before and after 1945. Brush, 12 Dec. 2020.

This booklet of about eighty pages of text along with over 280 references and 140 footnotes is a thorough study on the title subject. What did racism look like around the world before 1945? What has it looked like since?

Clearly, when I say it is “thorough,” it is thorough considering its scope, namely, around the world. What we learn is that racism has been pretty much a fact of life throughout most of history. Traditional African and South Asian cultures have castes. Most other countries and regions have people groups who are looked down upon by other people groups. Sometimes it is for ethnicity, sometimes for religion, sometimes for occupation, sometimes for other reasons.

Before 1945 it is safe to say that such notions were universal. The ostensible reason for this was social order. In America, for example, Jim Crow laws and redlining existed to keep black people “in their place.”

Such practices and ideas have changed radically since 1945, but only in select Western countries. Yes, the United Nations has a Charter on Human Rights, but most nations ignore it or simply say for one reason or another it does not apply to them. For example, in spite of known problems in Xinjinag, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia, and the fact that China only officially recognizes 55 of about 400 ethnic groups in its lands, China considers racism a “Western problem.”

Still, since the Charter was issued, numerous nations have attempted to address this issue.

Read this booklet. Basically, its main point is that racism is virtually everywhere. Only a handful of nations such as the United States with its Civil Rights laws and Australia with its formal apology of its treatment of Aboriginals have made attempts to rectify this. For most countries, “Order—not freedom—is the priority” (82). So-called systemic racism is the way of the world. Hal Lindsey would point out that when Jesus said “Nation will rise against nation” until the world’s end (see Matthew 24:7) the Greek word for nation is ethnos. It actually could be more accurately translated “Ethnic group will rise against ethnic group.” (For what it is worth, the next phrase in that verse says “Kingdom against kingdom” refers to the political entities.)

This book is descriptive, not prescriptive. It describes things historically and in the present. For that reason, some parts are fairly dry. Few people from any of the places described would say it was inaccurate in its descriptions. It gives credit to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt for the initial push for human rights. It also quotes former American President Barack Obama. Racism and Anti-Racism in the World is neither sanguine or pessimistic. It just tells it like it is.

One interpretation this reviewer thought of was that both anecdotally and statistically, the United States is much less racist than it was before 1945. Why, then, are we still hearing about Black Lives Matter and systemic racism? When I took a foreign policy class in college, a term the professor used was “revolution of rising expectations.” Revolutions and challenges to authority usually come from those whose expectations are rising. They are no longer kept down or directly oppressed. Most revolutionaries are educated and from the middle or upper classes, but they either know or feel that there is an injustice that needs correcting, and the way to correct it is through “systemic” change, or revolution. In a way, that is a good sign. Things are getting better. The question is whether or not the “system” has to be radically changed, and if so, how?

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