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Racism
Pronunciation: (rA'siz-um), [key] -n.
1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.
2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.
Race Classification and Racism
Attempts have been made to classify humans since the 17th century, when scholars first began to separate types of flora and fauna.
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach was the first to divide humanity according to skin color. In the 19th and early 20th century people such as Joseph Arthur Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, mainly interested in pressing forward the supposed superiority of their own kind of culture or nationality, began to attribute cultural and psychological values to race. This approach, called racism, culminated in the vicious racial doctrines of Nazi Germany, and especially in anti-Semitism. This same approach complicated the integration movement in the United States and underlay the former segregation policies of the Republic of South Africa (see apartheid).
Source: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright ©2000, Columbia University Press.