Racism is commonly defined as a belief or doctrine where inherent biological differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, with a corollary that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.[1]
The term racism is sometimes used to refer to preference for one's own ethnic group (ethnocentrism),[2] fear of foreigners (xenophobia), views or preferences against interbreeding of the races (miscegenation),[3] and nationalism,[4] regardless of any explicit belief in superiority or inferiority embedded within such views or preferences. Racism has been used in attempts to justify social discrimination, racial segregation and violence, including genocide.
The term racist, when used to describe someone who supports racism, has been a pejorative term since at least the 1940s, and the identification of a group or person as racist is nearly always controversial.
