Apartheid

that covers all aspects. In concrete individual cases, the awareness of ethnicism may
sometimes be much greater than that of classism or sexism. Yet in the theoretical realm,
ethnicism is not yet the object of such powerful theoretical systems as Marxism or feminism.
As a result of that, ‘racism’ is sometimes misunderstood as only genocidal racism, as the
pathologically hateful beliefs of Nazis, neo-Nazis and their likes. Despite ambitious, and to
some extent admirable and brave attempts to uncover some of the apparently murderous
foundations of ‘western’ civilization, domination, and power in this way, it often ends up
inadvertently and unfairly marginalizing forms of racism that are not immediately lethal, and
considering anything apart from murderous ethnicist hate to be explainable as natural
territoriality, class struggle, or the battle of the sexes, or as something else that is not
essentially racist. In my opinion, a neo-Nazi who still has not made his first kill is nowhere
near as bad as, for example, one of South Africa’s apartheid prime ministers, Hendrik
Verwoerd.
Alternatively, racism may be misunderstood behavioristically as something that can
only be harbored in individuals, agencies or laws, but not in epistemologically ‘fuzzier’
phenomena, for instance in society, groups, or informal institutions, such as ‘the mainstream
mass media’. 13 Although I sympathize with the strict epistemology of such an approach, I
believe that it often ends up as reductionism, e.g. as behaviorism or positivism, and,
inadvertently or not, as trivializing or denying racism, especially structural racism, where it
exists. Without generalizations, social science will become trivial, yet with constructs too airy
it may become meaningless and useless. The most important rule should in my view thus be
not to over-generalize.
My wish for a general theory of war and oppression, however, is in no way a
simultaneous sentence to political passivity until such a theory exists. Oppression can of
course be resisted (and defeated) without any theoretical understanding of what it really is.
This may even have been the case in most of the successful social and political revolutions in
history. Raising consciousness about systematic human rights violations may indeed help,
even immensely, and perhaps it is always helpful, but it is not always necessary.
2. The Theoretical Context: Colonialism, Apartheid, and Genocide
We will return to the question of what human rights are or might be, but for now it
should be pointed out that ethnicism cannot be reduced to a form of domestic oppression, nor
is it fully explainable with existing theories of oppression. For one thing, the role played by a
powerful state, independent of the dominant economic class (or the male gender), is still not
sufficiently incorporated into Marxist (or gender) theory. This is crucial not only for the
understanding of ethnicism, but for political science and for social science as a whole. 14 Yet
those forms, often also involving the forms that he does mention. See Cose: The Rage of a Privileged Class,
1993: 8f.
13 Magiros: Foucaults Beitrag zur Rassismustheorie, 1995. On racism as an overwhelmingly ‘western’
phenomenon, i.e. as a mainly and originally white, male, western European or North American, Christian
(Protestant and Roman Catholic) phenomenon, see Fredrickson 2002: 10ff. On contemporary racism as a
‘complex, structural phenomenon’, present at all levels in the mainstream mass media, especially in the reporting
of news, throughout the European Union, see Ter Wal: Racism and Cultural Diversity in the Mass Media: An
Overview of Research and Examples of Good Practice in the EU Member States, 1995-2000, 2002. Although
this report focuses on racism and carefully stays away from sweeping statements, it also points out commendable
anti-racist practices and attitudes in the media and does not rule out the possibility that things may actually have
improved in recent years.
14 The lack of a general theory of the state could even be considered the main deficit in Marxist as well as in
feminist political science. Among other things, many Marxists failed to predict or even perceive state oppression
as a problem in Communist societies. However, major efforts in both feminism and Marxism are underway
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