racialism

Racialism refers to the belief that human groups can be meaningfully divided into races on biological grounds and that these racial differences have real significance for physical traits, abilities, or behavior. The term’s exact meaning varies by context. In some uses, racialism denotes a neutral claim that race is a meaningful biological category; in others, it carries the implication that some groups are inherently superior or inferior. Because of this variation, the term is often discussed alongside racism, scientific racism, or racial ideology.

Historically, racialism arose with 18th–19th century efforts to classify people by physical characteristics and to explain social hierarchies through biology. It underpinned scientific racism, eugenics, and policies of slavery and segregation. Modern genetics shows substantial variation within populations and gradual differences between groups, with no clear, discrete biological races. Consequently, many scholars treat race as a social construct whose meanings arise from history, power, and institutions rather than from clear biological divisions.

Contemporary scholarship often distinguishes recognizing the social significance of race from endorsing essentialist biology. Critics argue that racialist claims risk justifying discrimination by reifying inherited differences, while proponents may separate empirical observations from moral judgments. Legal and human-rights frameworks generally reject racial hierarchy, focusing on equal rights and anti-discrimination. The term racialism remains variably defined across languages and disciplines, and some writers use it to critique essentialist thinking, while others use it to describe a belief in real but non-hierarchical racial differences.