racialism

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)The belief that humans can be categorized as belonging to distinct races, each race being characterized by fixed and heritable traits.

   “Racialism is at the heart of nineteenth-century attempts to develop a science of racial difference, but it appears to have been believed by others—like Hegel, before then, and Crummell and many Africans since—who have had no interest in developing scientific theories.”

   “Never mentioning Delany by name, Vashon lambastes the “combatants” for their racialism, insisting that a belief in “a natural distinction between the white and colored races” only legitimates the racism of blacks’ oppressors.”

   “Yet such racialism was built upon the data of philology, inferring discrete racial groups from different speech varieties.”

2. (countable, uncountable)Racism, the belief in the existence of different races and that some are superior to others; policies or practices which promote the dominance of one or more races over others.

   “This is The Lie of North American Superiority — an assumption based mainly on our superior living standard. […] This Lie of Superiority, this ill-disguised racialism in us who are always denouncing racialism in other people, is more than an unpleasant breach of good manners. It has deep and evil effects upon the affairs of the world.”

3. (British, countable, dated, uncountable)Tribalism, nationalism.

   “The modern dogma of nationalism, as maintained by a class of theoretic politicians (and which might more properly be called racialism [italics in original] — leaving nationalism to denote the recent modified application of socialism in pol. econ.)”