Antiracism

Abstract

As racism changes, antiracism changes as well. What was once a visceral and largely unorganized opposition, something that was experiential, immediate, and largely apolitical, became, over the longue durée of modern history, a fundamental dimension of democratic and egalitarian aspirations. For centuries people of color were seen as subhuman, “bare life,” primitive, and uncivilized. This was a projection of the barbarity of their overlords, uniformly of European descent, onto the victims of their rule. But the racially oppressed did not see themselves this way. Developing their resistance—their antiracism—as a practical necessity over centuries, people of color gradually acquired political standing—and some white allies too. Because of the oppositional consciousness that those movements instilled, not only in the minds and hearts of people of color, but also in those of their white allies, antiracism has become a permanent component of the unending quest for democracy and popular sovereignty.