Austrian Nazis and local residents watch as Jews are forced to scrub the pavement, Vienna, March 1938.Eichmann's list of the Jewish population in Europe, drafted for the Wannsee Conference, held to ensure the cooperation of various levels of the Nazi government in the Final Solution
The Nazi party, which seized power in the 1933 German elections and maintained a dictatorship over much of Europe until the End of World War II on the European continent, deemed the Germans to be part of an Aryan "master race" (Herrenvolk), who therefore had the right to expand their territory and enslave or kill members of other races deemed inferior.
The racial ideology conceived by the Nazis graded humans on a scale of pure Aryan to non-Aryan, with the latter viewed as subhuman. At the top of the scale of pure Aryans were Germans and other Germanic peoples including the Dutch, Scandinavians, and the English as well as other peoples such as some northern Italians and the French, who were said to have a suitable admixture of Germanic blood. Nazi policies labeled Romani people, people of color, and Slavs (mainly Poles, Serbs, Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians and Czechs) as inferior non-Aryan subhumans. Jews were at the bottom of the hierarchy, considered inhuman and thus unworthy of life. In accordance with Nazi racial ideology, approximately six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. 2.5 million ethnic Poles, 0.5 million ethnic Serbs and 0.2–0.5 million Romani were killed by the regime and its collaborators.
The Nazis considered most Slavs to be non-Aryan Untermenschen. The Nazi Party's chief racial theorist, Alfred Rosenberg, adopted the term from Klansman Lothrop Stoddard's 1922 book The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man.In the secret plan Generalplan Ost ("Master Plan East") the Nazis resolved to expel, enslave, or exterminate most Slavic people to provide "living space" for Germans, but Nazi policy towards Slavs changed during World War II due to manpower shortages which necessitated limited Slavic participation in the Waffen-SS. Significant war crimes were committed against Slavs, particularly Poles, and Soviet POWs had a far higher mortality rate than their American and British counterparts due to deliberate neglect and mistreatment. Between June 1941 and January 1942, the Nazis killed an estimated 2.8 million Red Army POWs, whom they viewed as "subhuman".
In the years 1943–1945, around 120,000 Polish people, mostly women and children, became the victims of ethnicity-based massacres by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which was then operating in the territory of occupied Poland. In addition to Poles who represented the vast majority of the murdered people, the victims also included Jews, Armenians, Russians, and Ukrainians who were married to Poles or attempted to help them.
During the intensification of ties with Nazi Germany in the 1930s, Ante Pavelić and the Ustaše and their idea of the Croatian nation became increasingly race-oriented. The Ustaše view of national and racial identity, as well as the theory of Serbs as an inferior race, was influenced by Croatian nationalists and intellectuals from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Serbs were primary targets of racial laws and murders in the puppet Independent State of Croatia (NDH); Jews and Roma were also targeted. The Ustaše introduced laws to strip Serbs of their citizenship, livelihoods, and possessions. During the genocide in the NDH, Serbs suffered among the highest casualty rates in Europe during the World War II, and the NDH was one of the most lethal regimes in the 20th century.
German praise for America's institutional racism was continuous throughout the early 1930s, and Nazi lawyers were advocates of the use of American models. Race based U.S. citizenship laws and anti-miscegenation laws (no race mixing) directly inspired the Nazi's two principal Nuremberg racial laws—the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law. Hitler's 1925 memoir Mein Kampf was full of admiration for America's treatment of "coloreds". Nazi expansion eastward was accompanied with invocation of America's colonial expansion westward, with the accompanying actions toward the Native Americans.[183] In 1928, Hitler praised Americans for having "gunned down the millions of Redskins to a few hundred thousand, and now keeps the modest remnant under observation in a cage." On Nazi Germany's expansion eastward, in 1941 Hitler stated, "Our Mississippi [the line beyond which Thomas Jefferson wanted all Indians expelled] must be the Volga."
A drinking fountain from the mid-20th century labelled "Colored" with an African-American man drinking.
A sign posted above a bar that reads "No beer sold to Indians [Native Americans]". Birney, Montana, 1941.
White supremacy was dominant in the U.S. from its founding up to the civil rights movement. On the U.S. immigration laws prior to 1965, sociologist Stephen Klineberg cited the law as clearly declaring "that Northern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the white race." While anti-Asian racism was embedded in U.S. politics and culture in the early 20th century, Indians were also racialized for their anticolonialism, with U.S. officials, casting them as a "Hindu" menace, pushing for Western imperial expansion abroad. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U.S. citizenship to whites only, and in the 1923 case, United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the Supreme Court ruled that high caste Hindus were not "white persons" and were therefore racially ineligible for naturalized citizenship.
It was after the Luce–Celler Act of 1946 that a quota of 100 Indians per year could immigrate to the U.S. and become citizens. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 dramatically opened entry to the U.S. to immigrants other than traditional Northern European and Germanic groups, and as a result would significantly alter the demographic mix in the U.S.
Serious race riots in Durban between Indians and Zulus erupted in 1949.New Win's rise to power in Burma in 1962 and his relentless persecution of "resident aliens" led to an exodus of some 300,000 Burmese Indians. They migrated to escape racial discrimination and wholesale nationalisation of private enterprises a few years later, in 1964.The Zanzibar Revolution of January 12, 1964, put an end to the local Arab dynasty. Thousands of Arabs and Indians in Zanzibar were massacred in riots, and thousands more were detained or fled the island. In August 1972, Ugandan President Idi Amin started the expropriation of properties owned by Asians and Europeans. In the same year, Amin ethnically cleansed Uganda's Asians, giving them 90 days to leave the country.
Shortly after World War II, the South African National Party took control of the government in South Africa. Between 1948 and 1994, the apartheid regime took place. This regime based its ideology on the racial separation of whites and non-whites, including the unequal rights of non-whites. Several protests and violence occurred during the struggle against apartheid, the most famous of these include the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, the Soweto uprising in 1976, the Church Street bombing of 1983, and the Cape Town peace march of 1989.
Effects of racism
Over the years, many studies have demonstrated that experiencing racism is connected to poor mental and physical health.
Mental Health
A 2015 research study shows that racism is twice as likely to affect mental health than physical health.
Unfair treatment and microaggressions at work, over-disciplining in schools, prejudice and discrimination in day-to-day life can cause the following mental health issues:
, depression
, stress
, emotional distress
, anxiety
, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
, suicidal thoughts
Even the fear of racism can be harmful as a 2018 paper suggests.
Mental health problems decrease positive mental health characteristics like resilience, hope, and motivation, making it hard for people to be mentally well.
Physical Health
Racism is a stressor that can impact physical health since mental health problems such as anxiety, PTSD, and stress can have effects on our physical bodies.
Racism increases stress levels which elevates blood pressure, causing high blood pressure and a weakened immune system. A 2019 study found that racism can increase inflammation in people’s bodies which can lead to chronic conditions such as heart disease and kidney disease.
Another study found that experiencing discrimination is linked to higher rates of smoking, alcohol use, drug use, and unhealthy eating habits.
During Covid-19, we saw the effects of the resulting poor physical health within the Black and Asian communities, which had the highest death rates.
Young People Facing Racism
Racist incidents affect confidence and self-esteem, increases stress and anxiety, and reduces concentration and focus levels. With more than half of young black and minority ethnics experiencing racism at their workplaces, and almost all Black British students experiencing racism in schools – many Black young people are at risk of falling behind performance-wise, as they deal with racism along with the usual issues, worries and hard work of school and early career jobs.
This means we have a generation of young people who have an additional barrier to cross when it comes to succeeding in life because of racism and its effects on mental and physical well-being.
Eradicating racism from society is paramount to give every child and young person a level-playing field so that they only have to worry about things that are normal at their stage in life, like doing well in an exam or preparing for your first day at your job – not facing racism.
Normalisation of Racism for People Affected
People experiencing racism don’t need research studies to tell them that the stress, fear, and low self-esteem they suffer are because of racist incidents, microaggressions, and prejudice set against them.
But many are unaware of the scale of racism’s effect on their wellbeing. Racism is so normalised for people who experience it, that the effects of the trauma from abuse and discrimination are not completely acknowledged or even understood.
Instead, people affected by racism may blame themselves for not performing well at school, at work, or not having the ability to be fully present in their personal lives.
Action Not Words
We can list numerous ways people experiencing racism can make their lives easier, taking care of their mental wellbeing and fostering a safe environment around themselves – but the theme of Black History Month this year is ‘Time for Change: Action Not Word’.
It is time to help Black people by aiming where the target should be – eradicating racism. It is time to take action, stand against hate and intolerance, and create an anti-racist society.
Education is key to make an anti-racist society a reality, but the responsibility falls on us as individuals to educate ourselves – not on Black people to spend mental and emotional labour educating us.
Here is a great page to start where you can find books, podcasts, websites, social media pages, and talks on Black history, racism, and racial equality.
Learn more on our Black History Month page about taking proactive steps to educate yourself and help create an anti-racist society:
Racism as a modern phenomenon
Racism is frequently described as a modern phenomenon. In the view of the French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault, the first formulation of racism emerged in the Early Modern period as the "discourse of race struggle", and a historical and political discourse, which Foucault opposed to the philosophical and juridical discourse of sovereignty.
European discourse, which first appeared in Great Britain, was then carried on in France by such people as Boulainvilliers (1658–1722), Nicolas Fréret (1688–1749), and then, during the 1789 French Revolution, Sieyès, and afterwards, Augustin Thierry and Cournot. Boulainvilliers, who created the matrix of such racist discourse in France, conceived of the "race" as being something closer to the sense of a "nation", that is, in his time, the "race" meant the "people".
He conceived of France as being divided between various nations—the unified nation-state is an anachronism here—which themselves formed different "races". Boulainvilliers opposed the absolute monarchy, which tried to bypass the aristocracy by establishing a direct relationship to the Third Estate. Thus, he developed the theory that the French aristocrats were the descendants of foreign invaders, whom he called the "Franks", while according to him, the Third Estate constituted the autochthonous, vanquished Gallo-Romans, who were dominated by the Frankish aristocracy as a consequence of the right of conquest. Early modern racism was opposed to nationalism and the nation-state: the Comte de Montlosier, in exile during the French Revolution