| 1. | a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others. |
| 2. | a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination. |
| 3. | hatred or intolerance of another race or other races. |
Normally it is argued that if you discriminate on the basis of race this means your racist. So they give the example if you have two candidates for a job and the black one is "more highly qualified" than the white one and you choose the latter you are racist. Yet the more highly qualified statement, normally based on paper qualifications, doesn't hold since there are many other factors determining whether you'll be good at the job. So if the employer by economising information costs believes that the black man is more likely to be hard work, not fit in with the firm and more likely to go off sick then this is an entirely justified action. It is a similar mechanism that one uses of people from certain backgrounds or places do x or y. It is merely economising on information costs since information is expensive to acquire; if they make mistakes though they will be punished by the market. This also explains why when most people say " I dislike immigrants because...." it is about behaviour and what's associated with immigrant behaviour not them just being an immigrant. What this comes down to is culture; not race but is associated with it. And I think it is clear that an anarchist legal system is better than a statist one thus the former is a superior culture. But suppose the latter is associated with whites and the former with blacks and a white man says "I hate blacks because they're anarchist" is a cultural rather than race based statement. So no racism here.
Supposing though that the employer believed that the two candidates for the job were identical but chose the white man over the black. Is this racist? Well not necessarily. Is giving preferential treatment to your children and family racist? It is an inherently discriminatory act but no one ever calls this racist. But as is obvious races are merely an extrapolation of the family so it thus makes sense you will prefer the one more like you than less. So no racism here either.
Suppose that you are employing people in Saharan Africa and you have a policy of employing only blacks since they are more likely to have sickle cell anaemia than whites and thus not susceptible to malaria (I think I remember this correctly but it makes the point). This is now a decision solely based on race but again is not necessarily racist. It would be the same as appointing an able bodied man over a guy in a wheel chair to be in your rugby team because there physical attributes are going to determine how good they are. This of course leaves open to debated whether certain races are more intelligent than others in the same way that Negroes are in general stronger than whites- look at athletics. So no racism here.
The only possible cogent definition of racism is that one believes that another race is morally inferior to another. So one believes that another race is ontologically inferior and deserves to live less than his own race. So examples of this would be those of the eugenics movement who saw blacks as less evolved than whites and so were not to be afforded the same (legal) rights as whites.
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