Racism

Racism refers to any theory or doctrine stating that inherited physical characteristics, such as skin colour, facial features, hair texture, and the like, determine behavior patterns, personality traits, or intellectual abilities. In practice, racism typically takes the form of a claim that some human races are superior to others.
Racism was a prevalent ideology in Europe and America in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Racist theories about supposed physical or intellectual superiority were advanced by Arthur de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, both of whom insisted that supreme among the races were members of the mythical Nordic, or Aryan, race. Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler based its extermination of millions of Jews and other ‘non-Aryans’ on this theory of race supremacy and the corollary concept of racial purity.

By Tânia Batista