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From: "Grant Lee"
> There have been comments in a couple of threads recently to the effect
that
> the Rwandan mass killings was not "racist". I don't really understand how
> such statements can be justified. The only reason I can perceive for such
> comments would be that both the Tutsis and Hutus were black Africans. But
> racism _rarely_ relies on something as overt as difference in skin colour.
> They were and are different ethnic groups and that is all it takes for
> racist ideology and for violence to occur. Perhaps I'm missing something?
I think that it is a mistake to confuse racism with ethnic hatred; race is a _biological_ category. A group is being singled out because of their physical appearance, not their religion, worldview, clan membership, or because they live on the other side of the Big Valley and compete with my group for food and are therefore bad.
Nazi anti-Semitism, as Arendt pointed out, differed from its medieval predecessor not only in its virulence but in being _racist_ rather than _religious_ hatred. Which is why, BTW, saying that pogroms were a result of "racism" is REALLY, REALLY DUMB. Pogroms occured because people thought the Jews killed Christ and used the blood of gentiles to make matzah (these beliefs being encouraged and stoked by the state for its own purposes). It had nothing whatsoever to do with their biology. Neither do ethnic conflicts in modern Russia. "Race" is not part of people's system of concepts. I would hazard a guess that this is true of most places outside the Western world. Russian civilization has very little to do with European civilization, in fact. Russia is closer to China.