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Cultural racism is a term used in scientific research to describe a specific type of racism which developed from the generally know form of racism, which is "biological racism". "Cultural racism" is used by the UN and in the scientific world to describe some racist ideologies, ideas, reasoning, arguments and notions. Citations are made in terms of ideology "Culture shock" and that cultural differences legitimize exclusion and discrimination based on racial notions and ranking of culture as higher and lower in relation to each other. Examples of such notions and arguments that are included in these citations could be "many immigrants don't go to work, and engage in tax evasion", "many Gypsies have a cultural predisposition for stealing", "muslims get lots of children, take over our country and evade our culture" and "all Americans are idiots".

Racism and culture racism

Equality Ombudsman says that racism "originally is a word that describes the division of people in a "racesystem"( like Apartheid) where certain races are biologically subordinated others. Today we talk more about culture racism - the notion that cultures are absolute, unchangeable and define the individual's characteristics."

Culture racism

The term "culture racism" was first used in the beginning of the 1980s. In England and the US the terms new racism (coined by the sociologist Martin Barker) and ethnicization are also used to describe the same phenomenon. During the 1980s and the 1990s, culture racism came to replace the previously generally accepted forms of biological racism.

Culture racism entails a essentialistic view on cultures. Culture racism seeks to ascribe a culture certain (negative) attributes. These are sometimes set against one's own culture, which is said to be lacking these negative attributes. Those who are accused of culture racism are also often accused of being a closet racist. According to Marcello Vittorio Ferrada de Noli, psychiatrist and professor emeritus in Public health, cultural racism is an expression of "intentional political fraud or of a subconscious xenophobic affective state" and that "the culture racist seldom wants, or rarely can, admit his/her actual biological/ethnical racist attitude".

Culture racism is raleted to Xenophobia, Islamophobia and Antisemitism. The cultural racism that is specifically directed against Jews is called antisemitism. If it is directed against the roma it is called Antiziganism, against Christians christophobia, and if it is directed against muslims it is called islamophobia.

There have been numerous scientific studies that show that racism takes different shapes and expressions, for example: biological, religious, scientific and cultural racism. In the scientific world these terms are separated and are treated like separate entities for racist expressions and guises.

A black person who has stereotypical (negative) notions about a white person is just as much of a cultural racist as a white person who has stereotypical (negative) notions about a black person.

A Muslim who has stereotypical (negative) notions about a Christian is just as much of a cultural racist as a Christian who has stereotypical (negative) notions about a Muslim.

A Swede who has stereotypical (negative) notions about an American is just as much of a cultural racist as an American who has stereotypical (negative) notions about a Swede.

Ideology

Cultural racism is built upon the idea of a Nation as a cultural entity and it expresses racist principals and thoughts about essences and racial "beings", hereditary proficiencies and abilities through cultural practices and cultural affiliation, through which differences between people (cultural and others) are explained. Cultural racism refers to cultures instead of the ancestry of different peoples and thus differs from biological racism. Culturally contingent racism includes a belief that one's own ethnical group's cultural heritage is above that of other ethnical groups.

"Cultural racism is rooted in the teaching, or rather belief, that a culture is a phenomenon with its' own soul and is "given once forever"(never changes). One's culture is often portrayed as an innate proficiency/attribute one naturally possesses if one belongs to a certain ethnical group or religion and that one carries one's "culture" as baggage throughout one's life. It is seen as a characteristic that stems from a sort of obvious, common identity and origin."

The excluding of the other thus becomes important because the culturally different then become unavoidably problematic for the "national identity".

Equality Ombudsman describes the cultural racism ideology as follows:

" After WWII, as the idea of different biological races became controversial, the term culture received increased significance in racist reasoning. Scientists usually talk about so called "Culture racism". Instead of starting from biology, culture is used to explain how people are and what they do. Culture is seen as something solid and unchangeable. The rhetoric and the purpose of the division is the same as when talking about biological races though. Stereotypical notions about the cultures of ethnical groups as essentially different and incompatible with the (for example) Swedish culture lies as a foundation of cultural racism. Cultures are seen as unchangeable and very "deciding" for a person's characteristics."

Sources

• The Swedish page "Kulturell rasism"

• Racism