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racism

nounattested in dialogue

  • United States//ˈɹeɪsɪzm̩//

The belief that there are distinct human races with inherent differences which determine their abilities, and generally that some are superior and others inferior.

noun

  1. 1

    The belief that there are distinct human races with inherent differences which determine their abilities, and generally that some are superior and others inferior.

    It is altogether inaccurate to suggest that Europe is being indoctrinated with Fascism or Racism.

    He lost his racism when he worked with a black man in Chicago. He lost his homophobia when he was befriended and looked after by his gay neighbors, a doctor and a nurse, in Little Rock.

    But other kinds of talk and text that are not visible, so called covert racist discourse, may be just as important in reproducing the culturally shared ideas that underpin racism.

  2. 2

    The policies, practices, or systems (e.g. government or political) promoting this belief or promoting the dominance of one or more races over others.

    Martin Luther King spoke out against racism.

    In “Crazy for This Democracy” (1945), Hurston critiques the US government's racism at home and abroad, including its silence on the anticolonial movements in Africa.

  3. 3

    Prejudice or discrimination based upon race or ethnicity; (countable) an action of such discrimination.

    For, if racism against non-whites is morally wrong and unjustifiable, then how can racism against whites be morally right and justifiable?

    This was partly true, but the biggest thing stopping him was that he had tried going to a college in Adelaide before and grew tired of the little racisms and discrimination that he got there.

  4. 4

    An act that could be seen as racist, typically relatively harmless and/or unintentional.

    I might have just did a racism. (Used similarly to oopsy.)

Etymology

Borrowed from French racisme, equivalent to race + -ism.

Forms

plural
racisms
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).