Erik Engheim
1 min readApr 6, 2022

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One cannot simply declare: This is my definition of racism and it is universal and the only truth.

That rejects experience of racism elsewhere. It also narrows down the definition of racism arbitrarily.

Racism is thinking somebody is a bad person or a lesser person because of their race, skin color or ethnicity. You don't have to slap a bunch of other qualifiers on it.

This definintion of racism is an entirely American centric view of racism which completely rejects the experiences of people in other cultures. It centers racism to be exclusicely about white and black people and their relation in the US or other other New World colonies.

It entirely ignores the experiences people have had in a variety of cultures outside of the US, where racism does not even need to be about black or white people. It also has a very poor fit with Europe where European history of racism within Europe has had very little to do with black people as Europe has traditionally had an almost non-existent black population.

Thus for those advancing racism within Europe, black people have not even been part of the discussion. Hitler for instance rarely spoke about black people. The Third Reich also had no clearly defined policy against black people.

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Erik Engheim
Erik Engheim

Written by Erik Engheim

Geek dad, living in Oslo, Norway with passion for UX, Julia programming, science, teaching, reading and writing.

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