Examples Of Postcolonial Racism

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Racist structures and attitudes are highly prevalent within the globalised context of today’s society. Other practices of discrimination or exclusion exist as well and can be based on various identity markers such as gender, sexual preference, status, and so on. Different forms of racism may further be distinguished, such as, for example, postcolonial racism and institutionalised racism. Postcolonial racism may be described as a form of racism, adopted by a Western society, that perceives the balance between indigenous privilege and indigenous rights to recognition or self-determination as strongly tipping over towards the first. Or, as Saïd Bouamama and Pierre Tevanian (2014) define it, postcolonial racism “is thus simply not a holdover from the past. …show more content…
529). It constitutes a racist imaginary that has been historically transmitted, confirmed and re-confirmed by the collectivities that painted the picture in the first place and who are continuously interpreting and re-interpreting what it encompasses in terms of social practice. Postcolonial racism is often thought to occur on an interpersonal level, between two or more individuals belonging to different communities. However, it is important to realise racism designates a social construct that is linked to overarching historical formations that have been perpetuated over the centuries. Institutionalised or systemic racism, on the other hand, occurs in a more top down fashion, between a government body and its constituents or subjects, resulting in particular policies and political practices that privilege one, non-coloured, group of people over another, coloured, group when it comes to participating in important political decision-making processes or even everyday life as full citizens, and, as such, promotes and maintains collective racial