To what extent (if any) is racism a product of modernity Answer with Essay

To what extent (if any) is racism a product of modernity Answer with reference to the writings of David Goldberg - Essay Example It is vital, however, to demonstrate its modernity if we are to show how racism, rather than being a problem of individual pathology, is embedded in the structures of the modern nation-state.† (Lentin) David Theo Goldberg, leading scholar of critical race theory, contends, â€Å"Race is one of the central conceptual inventions of modernity" and that "we have come, if often only silently, to conceive of social subjects foremost in racial terms.† (Goldberg, Racist Culture p.3) Throughout his work, The Racial State, he further argues â€Å"that race has marked modernity and its development constitutively, that the racial state is in this sense the paradigmatically modern social formation." (Goldberg, Racial State, p.148) In his view the modern state sees itself as homogenous, seeing anyone who does not fit the social mold as worthy of exclusion. The exclusion can be as literal as segregation or figurative as in the sense that members must assimilate or be ostracized. This shows the central racist tendency of the modern state and racism as a product of that tendency. Anthropologist Audrey Smedley views race and racism in this way. â€Å"I argue that race was institutionalised beginning in the 18th century as a worldview, a set of culturally created attitudes and beliefs about human group differences.† Smedley is convinced of this, and along with many modern anthropologists believes that the basis for current racism has its roots in African slavery specifically. She does not make the claim for slavery itself as the root of racism, since before the modern era many people were enslaved. In Malik’s view, Smedley’s contention is somewhat courageous. â€Å"For much of the past half century, politicians and scientists have largely spoken with a single voice on the issue of race. The experience of Nazism and the Holocaust made racial science politically unacceptable. It also shaped the scientific consensus that race was a social myth, not a