Is Racism a Western Idea?

The contemporary mood of frustration and pessimism about racism springs from the conviction that American society may never be able to get rid of it. Perhaps, after all, racism is a universal staple of the human psyche, or at least so deeply ingrained in Western consciousness that it is now ineradicable. In order to see whether this gloomy view is warranted, let us turn some of our basic assumptions about racism into questions.

Is racism a universal phenomenon, as sociologist Todd Gitlin has written? Has slavery fixed the notion of...