Tzvetan
Todorov,
On Human Diversity: Nationalism, Racism, and
Exoticism in French Thought
(Cambridge. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993, pp.90-94.
different
things. On the one hand, it is a matter of behavior, usually a
manifestation of hatred or contempt for individuals who have
well-defined physical characteristics different from our own; on the
other hand, it is a matter of ideology, a doctrine concerning human
races. The two are not necessarily linked. The ordinary racist is not a
theoretician; he is incapable of justifying his behavior with
"scientific" arguments. Conversely, the ideologue of race is not
necessarily a "racist," in the usual sense: his theoretical views may
have no influence whatsoever on his acts, or his theory may not imply
that certain races are intrinsically evil. [P.91]
In order to keep these two meanings separate, I shall adopt the distinction that sometimes obtains between "racism," a term designating behavior, and "racialism," a term reserved for doctrines. I must add that the form of racism that is rooted in racialism produces particularly catastrophic results: this is precisely the case of Nazism. Racism is ancient form of behavior that is probably found worldwide; racialism is a movement of ideas born in Western Europe whose period of flowering extends from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth.
Racialist doctrine, which will be our chief
concern here, can be presented as a coherent set of propositions. They
are all found in the “ideal type," or classical version of the doctrine,
but some of them may be absent from a given marginal or "revisionist"
version . These propostions may be reduced to five.
1.
The
existence of races. The first
thesis obviously consists in affirming that there are such things as
races, that is, human groupings whose members possess common physical
characteristics . . . From this perspective,
races are equated with animal species,
and it is postulated that there is same distance between two human races
as between horses and donkeys: not enough to prevent reproduction, but
enough to establish boundary readily apparent to all. Racialists are not
generally content to observe this state of affairs; they also want to
see it maintained: they are thus opposed to racial mixing.
The adversaries of racialist theory
have often attacked the doctrine on this point. First, they draw
attention to the fact that human groups intermingled from time
immemorial; consequently, their physical charateristics cannot be as
different as racialists claim. Next, these theorists add a two-pronged
biological observation to their historical argument. In the first place,
human beings indeed differ from one another in their physical
characteristics; but in order for these variations to give rise to
clearly delimited groups, the differences and the groups would have to
coincide. However, this is not the case. We can produce a first map of
the "races" if we measure genetic characteristics, a second if we
analyze blood composition, a third if we use the skeletal
System, a fourth if we
look at the epidermis. In the second place, within each of the groups
thus constituted, we find greater distances between [p.92] one
individual and another than between one group and another.
For these reasons, contemporary
biology, while it has not stopped studying variations among human beings
across the planet, no longer uses the concept of race . . .
2.
Continuity
between physical type and character.
But races are not simply groups of individuals who look alike (if this
had been the case, the stakes would have been trivial). The racialist
postulates, in the second place, that physical and moral characteristics
are interdependent; in other words, the segmentation of the world along
racial lines has as its corollary an equally definitive segmentation
along cultural lines. To be sure, a single race may possess more than
one culture; but as soon as there is racial variation there is cultural
change. The solidarity between race and culture is evoked to explain why
the races tend to go to war with one another.
Not only do the two segmentations coexist, it
is alleged, but most often a causal relation is posited between them:
physical difference determine cultural differences. . . .
3.
The
action of the group on the individualThe
same determinist principle comes into play in another sense: the
behavior of the individual depends, to a very large extent, on the
racio-cultural (or "ethnic") group to which he or she belongs. . . .
Racialism
is thus a doctrine of collective psychology, and it is inherently
hostile to the individualist ideology.
4.
Unique
hierarchy of values. The racialist
is not content to assert that races differ; he also believes that some
are superior to others, which implies that he possesses a unitary
hierarchy of values, an evaluative framework with respect to which he
can make universal judgments. This is somewhat astonishing, for the
racialist who has such a framework at his disposal is the same person
who has rejected the unity of the human race. The scale of values in
question is generally ethnocentric in origin: it is very rare that the
ethnic group to which a racialist author belongs does not appear at the
top of his own hierarchy. On the level of physical qualities, the
judgment of preference usually takes the form of aesthetic appreciation:
my race is beautiful, the others are more or less ugly. On the level of
the mind, the judgment concerns both [p.94] intellectual and moral
qualities (people are stupid or intelligent, bestial or noble.
5. Knowledge-based politics. The four propositions listed so far take the form of descriptions of the world, factual observations. They lead to conclusion that constitutes the fifth and last doctrinal proposition namely, the need to embark upon a political course that bring the world into harmony with the description provided. Having establish the "facts,'' the racialist draws from them a moral judgment and political ideal. Thus, the subordination of inferior races or even their elimination can be justified by accumulated knowledge on the subject of race. Here is where racialism rejoins racism : the theory is put into practice .