The ideology of racism

In his exceptionally insightful book, Racism: A Short History, Stanford University historian George M. Fredrickson notes the paradox that notions of human equality were the necessary precondition to the emergence of racism. If a society is premised on an assumption of inequality, producing an accepted hierarchy—one unquestioned even by those relegated to its nadir—then there is no need to locate the cause of the underlings’ position in some specific characteristic on their part that makes them less worthy than others.