Racism is one of those phenomena humanity has learned to condemn without managing to eliminate. It has lost much of its legal and scientific legitimacy, yet it continues to permeate societies, institutions, and human relationships. Its expressions are neither uniform nor exclusively Western. They can be found in wealthy and poor countries, between majorities and minorities, among neighboring populations, and sometimes within communities that share a common ancestry. Behind this diversity lies a recurring mechanism: the transformation of a real or perceived difference into a criterion for judgment, hierarchy, or exclusion.

A History of Differences Turned into Hierarchies

Human beings have always distinguished the groups to which they belong from those they consider outsiders. Languages, customs, beliefs, territories, and family lineages have long helped define collective identities. Yet not every distinction between groups constitutes racism. Racism emerges when characteristics associated with origin, ancestry, or appearance are used to assign individuals a supposedly predetermined value, set of abilities, rights, or social position.

This distinction is essential. Conflicts between communities may arise from territorial, political, religious, or economic causes without being based exclusively on racial ideology. Conversely, discrimination may be racial even when those responsible do not explicitly subscribe to a theory of biological superiority.

Modern racism developed in particular through the convergence of several historical forces: European colonial expansion, the transatlantic slave trade, systems of slavery, human classifications developed from the eighteenth century onward, and pseudoscientific doctrines claiming to establish natural hierarchies between populations.

These constructions helped justify systems of exploitation, dispossession, and domination. They also left lasting legacies in collective representations, institutions, and economic structures.

However, hierarchies based on ancestry did not originate exclusively with European colonization. Other societies developed systems of hereditary exclusion, distinctions between lineages, forms of slavery, and classifications separating populations regarded as superior from those considered inferior. These phenomena do not all correspond precisely to contemporary definitions of racism, but they demonstrate that the transformation of origin into social destiny has a geographically extensive history.

The twentieth century marked a major normative turning point. The defeat of Nazism, decolonization, civil rights movements, and the international condemnation of apartheid progressively undermined the legitimacy of official racial doctrines. The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, adopted by the United Nations in 1965, established an international legal framework grounded in equal rights.

Yet the disappearance of an ideological justification does not necessarily mean that the behaviors and mechanisms it helped establish have disappeared with it.

Racism Is Not Limited to Skin Color

In popular understanding, racism is often associated with opposition between Black and white populations. This dimension occupies a central place in certain national histories, particularly in the Americas and Southern Africa. It is nevertheless insufficient to describe the phenomenon's global diversity.

Racial discrimination may be based on skin color, but also on ethnic origin, ancestry, perceived nationality, physical characteristics, or collective identities treated as immutable.

Two populations with similar physical characteristics may experience intense ethnic hostility toward one another. Conversely, individuals sharing the same nationality may receive different treatment because of their appearance, surname, or family background.

Racism may also intersect with religion. When religious affiliation is portrayed as a hereditary characteristic inseparable from a supposedly homogeneous population, the boundary between religious hostility and racialization becomes particularly narrow. Certain forms of antisemitism and anti-Muslim racism illustrate this intersection, although criticism of a religion or disagreement over religious doctrine cannot automatically be equated with racial discrimination.

Racism must also be distinguished from xenophobia, which refers to hostility toward people perceived as foreigners. The two phenomena frequently overlap, but they are not identical. A foreign national may experience discrimination based on nationality, while a citizen born in their own country may be treated as an outsider because of their appearance.

This diversity explains why a global analysis of racism cannot be confined to a single history, a single vocabulary, or a universal opposition between two groups.

Visible Expressions and Silent Mechanisms

The most immediately recognizable manifestation of racism remains explicit hostility: insults, humiliation, threats, violence, assaults, or calls for the exclusion of a particular group.

Such behaviors are particularly visible because they produce identifiable incidents that can be reported, denounced, or sanctioned.

UNESCO's global report published in December 2024, based on an analysis of more than 600,000 online articles between January 2021 and May 2024, illustrates the diversity of documented manifestations, from verbal and physical violence to systemic discrimination. This media corpus, however, is neither an exhaustive record of incidents nor a direct measurement of their worldwide prevalence.

Alongside these overt manifestations are less conspicuous mechanisms.

A job applicant may be rejected because of their name. A landlord may refuse accommodation on the basis of perceived origin. A customer may be subjected to particular scrutiny in a shop. An employee may encounter obstacles to promotion without any explicitly racial justification being offered.

Such situations constitute direct discrimination when unfavorable treatment is based on a protected characteristic. Other mechanisms may be indirect: an apparently neutral rule produces particular disadvantages for certain groups without objective and proportionate justification.

The distinction between intention and outcome therefore becomes decisive. Discrimination may exist without an openly hostile declaration. Conversely, a statistical disparity between populations does not, by itself, establish that a particular decision is discriminatory. Social circumstances, explanatory factors, observed practices, and available comparisons must all be examined.

It is precisely within this space, between individual behavior and institutional functioning, that some of the most difficult forms of discrimination are found.

A Global Geography Shaped by Different Histories

In Europe, contemporary debates over racism are rooted in a history combining nationalism, antisemitism, the persecution of Roma communities, colonialism, migration, and demographic change. Discrimination may affect citizens from immigrant backgrounds, historical minorities, or individuals whose appearance is associated with foreign origins.

National contexts nevertheless differ considerably. Legal traditions, integration policies, available statistics, and conceptions of national identity are not identical in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, or Central and Eastern European countries. Debates over the recognition of collective differences also reflect competing understandings of equality.

In North America, the history of racism remains closely connected to slavery, segregation, policies toward Indigenous peoples, and the evolution of civil rights. In the United States, disparities observed in areas such as wealth, housing, and criminal justice sustain an ongoing debate over the persistent effects of historical institutions. In Canada, relations with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples occupy a central place in discussions of discrimination and its legacies.

In Latin America, racial questions take a different form. Racial and cultural mixing has often been incorporated into national narratives, sometimes making color hierarchies and inequalities affecting Indigenous and Afro-descendant populations less visible.

Brazil provides a particularly significant example of the relationship between demographic diversity, the legacy of slavery, colorism, and social stratification. In several Andean countries, relations between Indigenous populations, national institutions, and economic elites raise distinct questions, particularly concerning language, land, and political representation.

Africa presents another range of situations that would be misleading to reduce to the colonial experience alone.

South African apartheid represents one of the most institutionalized systems of racial separation in modern history. Its legal dismantling in 1994 did not immediately eliminate the socioeconomic disparities inherited from decades of segregation.

Elsewhere on the continent, discrimination may take the form of hostility between ethnic groups, stigmatization of migrant populations, prejudice linked to ancestry, or distinctions between communities considered indigenous to a territory and populations that settled there more recently.

Tensions between African populations demonstrate that racism and xenophobia are not confined to relations between Europe and the rest of the world. Geographic proximity, shared skin color, or a common colonial history do not guarantee the absence of hierarchies and prejudice.

In North Africa, the historical relationships among Arabic-speaking, Amazigh, Black, and Saharan populations, together with the experiences of some sub-Saharan migrants, require an analysis attentive to differences between countries, social legacies, and contemporary realities. Discrimination based on skin color may intersect with distinctions involving nationality, administrative status, social class, or ancestry.

In the Middle East, racial questions intersect with ethnic identities, nationalities, and migrant labor systems. The circumstances of some foreign workers, particularly those originating from Africa and Asia, illustrate the importance of the relationships between legal status, economic dependence, and discrimination. It remains necessary, however, to distinguish abuses related to labor or immigration law from those whose racial character has been established.

Asia presents equally considerable diversity.

In South Asia, caste- and descent-based discrimination has distinctive historical characteristics. It cannot be equated without qualification with Western racial classifications, although certain mechanisms involving hereditary status and social exclusion display important similarities.

In East Asia, debates concern ethnic minorities, foreign populations, imperial legacies, and conceptions of national homogeneity. In Southeast Asia, relations between national majorities and ethnic or religious minorities may also involve discriminatory practices.

Finally, in Oceania, relations between modern states and Indigenous peoples constitute a central issue. In Australia and New Zealand, historical assimilation policies, land questions, and disparities in living conditions have contributed to processes of recognition, reform, and public debate.

This global geography reveals an essential characteristic: racism does not possess a single form. It develops through the categories, power relations, and collective memories specific to each society.

Colorism: Hierarchy Within Communities

One of the less systematically examined expressions of racism is colorism, which involves assigning social advantages or disadvantages according to variations in skin tone.

Unlike discrimination between groups identified as distinct, colorism may operate within the same community, family, or national population.

In several societies across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America, historical preferences for lighter skin have been associated, depending on the context, with colonial hierarchies, class distinctions, beauty standards, or representations of social prestige.

These preferences may influence standards of attractiveness, media representation, marriage prospects, and sometimes professional opportunities.

The international development of certain skin-lightening product markets illustrates how a social hierarchy can become a commercial norm. It would nevertheless be reductive to attribute every use of such products to a single cause: individual motivations, cultural practices, and aesthetic pressures vary considerably.

Above all, colorism demonstrates that racism does not always require clearly separated groups. A hierarchy may be reproduced within a population whose members share a collective identity.

Everyday Racism and the Transmission of Prejudice

Racism is not transmitted exclusively through political doctrines or institutions. It also circulates through family conversations, jokes, cultural representations, and social habits.

A remark about someone's appearance, an automatic association between origin and behavior, suspicion directed at a group, or a generalization presented as obvious may contribute to the normalization of prejudice.

Not all stereotypes produce the same consequences, and expressing a stereotype does not automatically constitute a legal offense or legally established discrimination. Their repetition may nevertheless influence how individuals evaluate others.

The media play an ambivalent role. They can challenge inherited representations, but they may also reinforce them when particular populations are repeatedly associated with crime, poverty, violence, or behaviors presented as culturally immutable.

The issue is not to prohibit all descriptions of social realities. It is to distinguish contextualized information from generalizations that transform the characteristics of a few individuals into supposed attributes of an entire group.

This distinction is especially important in societies experiencing migration-related, security, or identity tensions. Economic difficulties and collective anxieties may encourage the search for easily identifiable culprits. Minorities and foreigners may then become, in certain narratives, convenient explanations for problems whose causes are often considerably more complex.

Institutional Racism: When Rules Are Not Enough

One of the major developments in contemporary thinking concerns the distinction between individual and institutional discrimination.

The former refers to identifiable behaviors or decisions. The latter examines how rules, administrative practices, or organizational mechanisms may produce or perpetuate disadvantages associated with origin, even in the absence of widespread discriminatory intent.

This concept does not mean that every institution displaying disparities is necessarily racist. Rather, it calls for an examination of whether particular practices actually contribute to unjustified differences in treatment.

In education, residential segregation may influence access to schools with different levels of resources. In housing, discrimination during the application process may help maintain geographic separation between populations. In the labor market, apparently neutral recruitment criteria may disadvantage applicants because of their background or origin.

These mechanisms can reinforce one another. Restricted access to housing in certain neighborhoods influences educational opportunities, which subsequently affect professional trajectories and income. Accumulated disadvantages may be transmitted across generations, even after the original legal discrimination has been abolished.

The analytical difficulty lies in identifying causation. Observed disparities may result from several simultaneous factors: historical legacies, family resources, location, educational attainment, public policies, and discriminatory practices.

A rigorous analysis must avoid two opposing errors: automatically attributing every inequality to racism, or assuming that discrimination cannot exist without evidence of an individual's hostile intent.

The Economics of Exclusion

Racism also has an economic dimension whose consequences extend beyond those directly affected.

When a company rejects qualified applicants because of their origin, it artificially restricts its pool of talent. When a housing market operates according to discriminatory preferences, it may contribute to inefficient housing allocation and the lasting segmentation of neighborhoods.

When part of the population repeatedly encounters barriers to credit, employment, or professional advancement, the consequences may affect wealth accumulation and social mobility.

World Bank research on Afro-descendant populations in Latin America has documented persistent socioeconomic disadvantages in education, income, and mobility, including in certain comparisons that account for other socioeconomic characteristics.

The report published in March 2026 by the International Labour Organization, devoted to racial equality in the world of work, likewise emphasizes that discrimination affects not only individuals but also businesses, labor markets, and economies.

These observations do not make it possible to calculate a single, universally accepted global cost of racism. The methodologies, populations studied, and economic mechanisms vary too substantially to justify such a simplification.

They nevertheless establish that discrimination is not merely a violation of individual rights. It may also prevent a society from making full use of its human resources.

The New Digital Frontiers

Digital transformation has created new environments in which prejudice can spread, be reproduced, or become amplified.

Social media enable the rapid circulation of hostile discourse, ethnic caricatures, and theories that rank populations hierarchically. Recommendation mechanisms may increase the visibility of certain polarizing content, although their effects depend on platforms, technical settings, and user behavior.

Artificial intelligence raises a different question: the algorithmic reproduction of inequality.

A recruitment system trained on historical data may reproduce preferences embedded in earlier decisions. A facial recognition tool may display unequal performance across demographic groups. A language model may generate or reinforce stereotypical associations when they are present in its training data.

These risks do not mean that every algorithmic system is inherently discriminatory. They demonstrate that a technology does not automatically become neutral simply because it relies on computation.

Data quality, optimization objectives, validation criteria, and oversight mechanisms largely determine outcomes.

The challenge therefore extends beyond removing openly racist statements. It also concerns the design of digital systems, their auditing, the transparency of automated decisions, and individuals' ability to challenge unjustified treatment.

Racism may now manifest itself without direct contact between the person experiencing a disadvantage and the person who designed the mechanism responsible for it.

Between Universalism and the Recognition of Differences

Political and legal responses to racism are based on sometimes divergent conceptions of equality.

One approach emphasizes the universality of rights and holds that individuals should be treated without distinction based on origin. It stresses institutional neutrality and the protection of every citizen through common rules.

Another approach argues that formal equality is not always sufficient to correct disadvantages inherited from historical discrimination. Under certain circumstances, it supports targeted measures intended to improve access to education, employment, or institutional representation for affected groups.

These approaches are not necessarily incompatible. The 1965 International Convention itself recognizes the possibility of special measures designed to ensure effective equality, subject to certain conditions and without perpetuating separate rights.

The debate concerns primarily the instruments used, their effects, and their limitations.

Policies that completely disregard differences in circumstances may fail to identify certain mechanisms of exclusion. Conversely, measures that permanently classify individuals according to categories of origin may raise difficulties concerning definition, individual justice, and social cohesion.

The effectiveness of responses therefore depends less on their moral justification alone than on their ability to identify actual discrimination, establish precise objectives, and measure results.

The Limits of Global Measurement

One of the major difficulties in studying racism is the absence of a perfectly comparable international statistical system.

Some countries collect data based on racial or ethnic self-identification. Others prioritize nationality, country of birth, or migration background. Still others place significant restrictions on the collection of sensitive data.

These differences reflect distinct political and legal histories. They nevertheless make international comparisons difficult.

The number of recorded complaints does not necessarily measure the actual number of discriminatory incidents. An increase may reflect worsening behavior, but it may also indicate improved reporting mechanisms or greater confidence in institutions.

Similarly, self-reported surveys provide valuable insight into lived experiences without always establishing the legal nature of every reported incident.

Experimental methods, particularly comparable fictitious applications submitted to employers or landlords, offer complementary tools for identifying differences in treatment. They also have limitations regarding representativeness.

Global racism therefore cannot be reduced to a simple ranking of countries or populations. Serious comparisons must account for definitions, data collection methods, historical contexts, and the specific areas being studied.

The absence of data is not evidence that discrimination does not exist. But the presence of disparities never eliminates the need to investigate their causes.

The Paradox of Contemporary Societies

The present era contains a remarkable contradiction.

Never have the principles of equality and non-discrimination enjoyed such broad international recognition. Doctrines openly asserting the biological superiority of one population over another have lost their scientific legitimacy. Official systems of racial segregation have largely been dismantled, and many states have adopted legal protections against discrimination.

Yet prejudice, exclusion, and inequalities associated with origin continue to appear in very different contexts.

This persistence does not mean that historical transformations have been ineffective. The abolition of slavery, the recognition of civil rights, the end of apartheid, and the adoption of antidiscrimination legislation have profoundly changed the lives of millions of people.

Rather, it demonstrates that legal norms, social behavior, and economic structures do not always evolve at the same pace.

A law may abolish an official distinction without immediately erasing collective representations. Institutional reform may guarantee new rights without eliminating disadvantages accumulated over generations. A society may recognize the equality of its citizens while retaining informal practices that restrict certain groups' access to the same opportunities.

The problem becomes particularly complex when individuals themselves fail to recognize the mechanisms in which they participate.

Contemporary racism is therefore not merely a survival from the past. It may also emerge from the reproduction of everyday practices, organizational decisions, and collective representations that adapt to social change.

Equality as Reality Rather Than Proclamation

Combating racism cannot be reduced to a general condemnation of prejudice. It requires institutions capable of protecting individuals, mechanisms for identifying discrimination, and policies whose effects can be evaluated.

It also requires preserving a fundamental distinction between individual responsibility and collective identity. No individual should be held responsible for another person's actions because of a shared origin, just as no individual should be presumed to possess particular virtues or deficiencies determined by ancestry.

This principle applies to all populations, whether majorities or minorities, regardless of their history.

The objective is not to erase cultural, historical, or identity differences. These differences contribute to the diversity of human societies. It is to prevent their transformation into hierarchies of dignity, rights, or opportunity.

The difficulty is considerable because the most enduring boundaries are not always those states draw on maps. Some run through institutions, labor markets, neighborhoods, families, and individual perceptions.

For centuries, racism sought to present hierarchies constructed by societies as natural facts. Scientific knowledge and legal transformations have extensively challenged that claim. Yet history demonstrates that a hierarchy can survive long after the theory once used to justify it has disappeared.

Perhaps this is the central challenge facing contemporary societies: they have gradually learned to recognize equality as a universal principle. They must still determine how fully that equality governs the ways human beings live, work, move, and encounter one another.

For an invisible boundary can continue to shape human lives long after the law has ceased to recognize it.

Main Sources

  • United Nations — International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, adopted December 21, 1965, entered into force January 4, 1969. Foundational international legal framework defining racial discrimination and states' obligations.

https://treaties.un.org/

  • UNESCO — Global Outlook on Racism and Discrimination, December 11, 2024. Global analysis of manifestations of racism and discrimination based on more than 600,000 online articles published between January 2021 and May 2024.

https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/global-outlook-racism-and-discrimination

  • International Labour Organization — In Conditions of Freedom and Dignity: Pathways to Racial Equality in the World of Work, March 11, 2026. Research examining racial discrimination in employment, its consequences, and institutional responses.

https://www.ilo.org/publications/conditions-freedom-and-dignity-pathways-racial-equality-world-work

  • World Bank — Afro-descendants in Latin America: Toward a Framework of Inclusion, 2018. Study examining socioeconomic inequalities, structural discrimination, and social mobility among Afro-descendant populations in Latin America.

https://documents.worldbank.org/

  • United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights — Documentation on racial discrimination, international protection mechanisms, and the work of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

https://www.ohchr.org/

Methodological note: This article provides a structural and comparative analysis. Regional examples describe documented phenomena without claiming to characterize uniformly the populations or institutions of individual countries. Racial, ethnic, religious, nationality-based, and status-based discrimination are distinguished where their underlying mechanisms differ. Institutional findings are separated from analytical interpretations.