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In everyday usage, identification within a racial group is
the result of identification by others. In this definition of
race, there is associated the complementary notions of ’racism*
and ’racialism* - the former according to Encel (Stevens, 1972:1}
referring to an ideology of race prejudice, the latter to the
practice of discrimination and repression.
The World Council of Churches and UNESCO (Stevens, 1972:1)
use a definition of racism in which they emphasize both biological
differences and the objective of the exclusion of one group by
another on these grounds.
Gordon (1961:283) asserts that there are no ’logical’,
ideological reasons for the separate Communality of negroes as
a group:
Dual social structures are created solely by
the dynamics of prejudice and discrimination,
rather than being reinforced by the ideological
commitments of the minority itself .
Yinger (1961:254), in quoting Herzl, describes a
situation where the boundary from without is seen as a basis for
the establishment of the identity of Jewish people. ”We are a
people - the enemy has made us a people”. Such exclusion is an
example of the formation of a group by the imposition of
boundaries from without by a dominant group which uses such
boundaries as a means of preserving its own universe of meaning.
In the case both of ethnicity and race, the notion of
boundaries is enlightened by theory from within the sociology
of knowledge. Among forms of conceptual machinery used for the
construction and maintenance of such boundaries are those of
nihilation and therapy.