Racism is a term that is equated with bigotry.

A bigot is defined as “a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion.”

Wikipedia states that “The correct use of the term requires the elements of obstinacy, irrationality, and animosity toward those of differing devotion.”

The important word here, and that which is the intended meaning applied  by those who would classify one as a bigot is, irrationality.

A bigot has irrational beliefs about others based on race, religion, sex, age etc. The bigot is obstinate with these irrational beliefs and exhibits an undying animosity towards his hated targets.

In modern parlance, when one says that the other is a racist, it is being asserted that the other person has irrational beliefs with regard race, which is just as often conflated with religion.

Is racism irrational?

The most concise rebuttal of that proposition was written in 1988 by an Australian I have a great admiration for, the late David Stove, Associate Professor at Sydney University’s Department of Traditional and Modern Philosophy.

“In “Racial and Other Antagonisms” Stove asserted that racism is not a form of prejudice but common-knowledge:

“Almost everyone unites in declaring “racism” false and detestable. Yet absolutely everyone knows it is true.” (Source)

Stove explains the rationality of racial antagonism as follows:

“But while I see nothing to prevent there being racial antagonism which was entirely rational, I am sure there could not be racial antagonism which depended only on false or irrational beliefs.

For, suppose there could be. Suppose it could happen, for example, that Race A does not at first hate Race B at all, while B hates A, but only because of false and irrational beliefs which it has about A. Then, unless a fluke or miracle prevents it, B’s hatred of A will issue in treatment of members of A, of a kind which will cause A to hate B too, and rationally hate B at that. This hatred will in turn (flukes and miracles again aside), issue in A’s treating members of B in ways which will cause new, and this time rational, hatred of A among Bs. This new and rational hatred will lead B to treat A in such a way that…But it cannot be necessary to go on: you must by now have recognised where you live.” (Bolding mine, emphasis in the original)

Stove’s analysis is concise and simple without being simplistic. Racial and other antagonisms are inevitable and whilst some are irrational some are rational. To what degree it is one or the other it is hard to say but the point is – the antagonisms are often rational.

Stove’s solution is as follows:

“Believe it, and forget it: “divide through” for it, since it is a factor common to all social antagonisms. At least, you must divide through for it, if your object is to justify the giving of special sympathy or (for example) compensation, to just one side of the antagonism. What is common to both sides cannot justify the preferential treatment of one.” (Bolding mine, emphasis in the original)

Repeat that: “What is common to both sides cannot justify the preferential treatment of one.”

The short essay of which the above are excerpts can be found in Stove’s book of short essays, “Cricket versus Republicanism”.