based on pigmentation, as in white supremacy, or on a linguistically based myth of remote descent from a superior race, as in Aryanism. But racism as I conceive it is not merely an attitude or set of beliefs; it also expresses itself in the practices, institutions, and structures that a sense of deep difference justifies or validates. Racism,

In all manifestations of racism from the mildest to the most severe, what is being denied is the possibility that the racializers and the racialized can coexist in the same society, except perhaps on the basis of domination and subordination.

himself to be a member of the nobility of the country.”

Europeans might seek to affirm their status and self-worth through the allegation that the blood in their veins was superior to that of people descended from Jews,

My theory or conception of racism, therefore, has two components: difference and power.

It is uniquely in the West that we find the dialectical interaction between a premise of equality and an intense prejudice toward certain groups that would seem to be a precondition for the full flowering of racism as an ideology or worldview.

The religious bigot condemns and persecutes others for what they believe, not for what they intrinsically are.

Hispanidad was being constructed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, limpieza de sangre was a way of excluding those who did not meet the requirements for a new and more exacting conception of what it meant to be Spanish.

A white, even if he rides barefoot on horseback, considers