page_title: Cultural racism
section_title: Concept
hierarchical_section_title: Cultural racism / Concept
caption_attribution_description: French philosopher Étienne Balibar in 2011
context_page_description: Cultural racism, sometimes called neo-racism, new racism, postmodern racism, or differentialist racism, is a concept that has been applied to prejudices and discrimination based on cultural differences between ethnic or racial groups. This includes the idea that some cultures are superior to others, and that various cultures are fundamentally incompatible and should not co-exist in the same society or state. In this it differs from biological or scientific racism, meaning prejudices and discrimination rooted in perceived biological differences between ethnic or racial groups.
  The concept of cultural racism was developed in the 1980s and 1990s by West European scholars such as Martin Barker, Étienne Balibar, and Pierre-André Taguieff. These theorists argued that the hostility to immigrants then evident in Western countries should be labelled racism, a term that had been used to describe discrimination on the grounds of perceived biological race since the early 20th century.
context_section_description: The concept of "cultural racism" has been given various names, particularly as it was being developed by academic theorists in the 1980s and early 1990s. The British scholar of media studies and cultural studies Martin Barker termed it the "new racism", whereas the French philosopher Étienne Balibar favoured "neo-racism", and later "cultural-differential racism". Another French philosopher, Pierre-André Taguieff, used the term "differentialist racism", while a similar term used in the literature has been "the racism of cultural difference". The Spanish sociologist Ramón Flecha instead used the term "postmodern racism".
  The term "racism" is one of the most controversial and ambiguous words used within the social sciences. Balibar characterised it as a concept plagued by "extreme tension" as well as "extreme confusion". This academic usage is complicated by the fact that the word is also common in popular discourse, often as a term of "political abuse"; many of those who term themselves "anti-racists" use the term "racism" in a highly generalised and indeterminate way.
  The word "racisme" was used in the French language by the late 19th century, where French nationalists employed it to describe themselves and their belief in the inherent superiority of the French people over other groups. The earliest recorded use of the term "racism" in the English language dates from 1902, and for the first half of the 20th century the word was used interchangeably with the term "racialism". According to Taguieff, up until the 1980s, the term "racism" was typically used to describe "essentially a theory of races, the latter distinct and unequal, defined in biological terms and in eternal conflict for the domination of the earth".
  The popularisation of the term "racism" in Western countries came later, when "racism" was increasingly used to describe the antisemitic policies enacted in Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 1940s. These policies were rooted in the Nazi government's belief that Jews constituted a biologically distinct race that was separate from what the Nazis believed to be the Nordic race inhabiting Northern Europe. The term was further popularised in the 1950s and 1960s amid the civil rights movement's campaign to end racial inequalities in the United States. Following the Second World War, when Nazi Germany was defeated and biologists developed the science of genetics, the idea that the human species sub-divided into biologically distinct races began to decline. At this, anti-racists declared that the scientific validity behind racism had been discredited.
  From the 1980s onward, there was considerable debate—particularly in Britain, France, and the United States—about the relationship between biological racism and prejudices rooted in cultural difference. By this point, most scholars of critical race theory rejected the idea that there are biologically distinct races, arguing that "race" is a culturally constructed concept created through racist practices. These academic theorists argued that the hostility to migrants evident in Western Europe during the latter decades of the twentieth century should be regarded as "racism" but recognised that it was different from historical phenomena commonly called "racism", such as racial antisemitism or European colonialism. They therefore argued that while historic forms of racism were rooted in ideas of biological difference, the new "racism" was rooted in beliefs about different groups being culturally incompatible with each other.
caption: Étienne Balibar's concept of "neo-racism" was an early formulation of what later became widely termed "cultural racism"
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