racial hierarchies
Ethnic superiority systems
Racial hierarchies are systems that rank human races in order of supposed superiority or inferiority.
Such systems have been used to justify slavery, colonialism, segregation, and discrimination.
The concept assumes races can be meaningfully compared and ordered—a premise rejected by modern science but persistent in social structures: The plantation economy depended on rigid racial hierarchies.
The term usually appears in critical analysis of how these systems developed and persist.
- apartheidRacial separation policy
- separate but equalRacial segregation's constitutional fiction
- colorismBias based on complexion
- skin colorPigmentation of human dermis
- color lineSegregation by race
segregation · discrimination · systemic racism · blood quantum · Jim Crow laws · scientific racism · phrenology · one-drop rule · caste systems · colonialism · slavery · eugenics · abolitionism · social stratification · imperialism · racialization · oppression · pecking order
- colonial slaverychattel slavery, African slaves, slave markets, slave codes, slave ships
racial hierarchiesracial equality
Equal treatment regardless of ancestry
egalitarianism · human equality · social equality · antiracism · racial justice
racial hierarchiesanti-racism
Combating ethnic discrimination actively
racial justice · racial integration · universalism · common humanity · colorblindness
racial hierarchiescivil rights
Guaranteed individual legal protections
integration · desegregation · equal protection · rainbow nation