Racism in Northwestern Europe

Some Historical and Theoretical Bases of Racism in Northwestern EuropeAuthor(s): Christen T. JonassenSource: Social Forces, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Dec., 1951), pp. 155-161Published by: University of North Carolina PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2571627Accessed: 09/11/2008 10:46

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uncpress.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with thescholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform thatpromotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

University of North Carolina Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toSocial Forces.

http://www.jstor.org

RACISM IN NORTHWESTERN EUROPE 155

of a dismal future state in which all human ac- tivities are viewed continuously and reient]essly by an all-seeing eye. The basic weakness in this picture is precisely this assumption of the existence of robot-like creatures who, alone, could perform such a function, plus the fact that millions of them would be required to keep the population under complete control. The concentration camp material supports this criticism. Many of the flaws in the efficiency of the concentration camp system were due to the venality of the SS personnel, some of them appeared because of the persistence of hu- mane considerations, and vanity often played into the hands of the inmates.

There is another important factor that contrib- utes to the impossibility of instituting perfect social controls that is demonstrated by the concentration camp experience. This also pertains to the human rather than the material aspects of organization. To achieve their ends, the concentration camp personnel had to employ the services of their prisoners. Need for special skills made some of the jailors dependent upon some of the prisoners, a fact that gave these unforeseen opportunities to counteract administrative measures to the ad- vantage of large numbers of inmates. Work re- quirements, for example, employment outside of the camps, often put prisoners in a position to thwart the controls imposed upon them. The in- genuity of the strategems used by concentration

inmates makes for some of the brighter pictures in the otherwise monotonously gruesome record. Any ruling personnel is similarly dependent upon its subject population in one way or another and this dependence insures that control can never be complete. This fact should be of interest to stu- dents of bureaucracy, especially to those who draw a lugubrious picture of the consequences of the extension of bureaucratic control in our society. These analysts seem to have overlooked the corrective factors present in any organization by virtue of the fact that what is organized are human beings and not robots.

In conclusion we might point out that all of the special topics of the sociology of the concentration camp system can be focused upon one basic issue, namely, the problem of survival in concentration camps. The material abundantly shows that only in rare instances was survival a purely individual achievement. In most cases survival was due to the operation of social factors some of which I have mentioned in the preceding discussion. If evidence is needed in support of a truism, this material clearly sustains the basis upon which sociology itself is founded, namely, the fact that for man, society is a means of survival for the individuals in whom it is manifest, and also, that richness of individual life depends upon the richness of the human relations available and the variety and complexity of social arrangements.

SOME HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL BASES OF RACISM IN NORTHWESTERN EUROPE

CHRISTEN T. JONASSEN Ohio State University

T HE dogma of racism, that one ethnic or racial group is condemned by nature to hereditary inferiority and another group is

destined to hereditary superiority, has been one of the most fateful ideas in recent history. Hank- ins, in 1926, deplored the rising tide of adulation of the blond dolichocephal as the embodiment of all that was great, but hopefully concluded that, though this propaganda was not yet spent, it appeared to be weakening.' He stated further, "It

is no exaggeration to say that the doctrine of Aryan ascendency of which Count Arthur de Gobineau has been proven by time to have been the major prophet, was one of the most influential ideas of the half century preceding the Great War."2 If events have proven the prophesy of the former statement to be erroneous, the same events have shown his latter judgment to be well founded indeed. And the portentous shadows cast by the vast stirring of the peoples of Asia promise that the influence of racism will be as great in the I Frank H. Hankins, The Racial Basis of Civilization:

A Critique of the Nordic Doctrine (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), p. vii. 2 Ibid., p. 15.

156 SOCIAL FORCES

next half century as it was in the half century preceding.

Personality needs as well as cultural and social dynamics are probably responsible for the fact that a certain amount of ethnocentrism and chauvinism in whatever guise may be found in all societies. And the attempt to interpret history on a racial basis is as ancient as history itself. Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and Medieval man left copious evidences of their conviction that their achieve- ments were attributable to the heroic stock from which they had sprung and to the particularly gifted blood that flowed in their veins.3 But probably nowhere else have the beliefs which we call "racism" been so studied and elaborated by the scientist, pseudo-scientist, philosopher, philol- ogist, historian, the writer, the poet, and the politician as in Germany, England, and the United States. France has flirted with Gallo-Romanism, Celticism and Gallicism; the Slavic peoples with Pan-Slavism, and the Turks with Pan-Turanism, the Negroes with Pan-Africanism, the people of Asia with Pan-Asianism, and the Italians under Mussolini with Neo-Romanism.4 But these ideologies were for the most part pale imitations of the doctrine of racial superiority, known variously as Aryanism, Nordicism, Teutonism, Gobinism, An- glo-Saxonism, and Anthropo-Sociology or Social Selectionism, which developed in northwestern Europe. It is the latter brand of racism that we are particularly interested in investigating.

There are a number of theories concerning the origins and development of racism. Thus Snyder regards racism as a fundamental mechanism de- vised to strengthen the developing nationalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.5 And Bene- dict states: "European expansion overseas set the stage for racist dogmas and gave violent early expression to racial antipathies without propound- ing racism as a philosophy. Racism did not get its

currency in modern thought until it was applied to conflicts within Europe-first to class conflict, and then to national conflict."6 And Cox following the Marxist position states, "It is probable that without capitalism, cultural chance occurrence among whites, the world might never have ex- perienced race prejudice";7 while MacCrone holds that racist ideologies were characteristic products of eighteenth century European domination and nineteenth century evolutionary theory and were non-existent in the minds of Europeans before this time.8 Thus scholars differ on some points and agree on others or give different weights to possible causal factors.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt a recon- ciliation of conflicting theories concerning the development of Nordic racism in the light of certain materials which have heretofore been ig- nored in the discussion of this problem, and to throw additional light on the development of the phenomenon of racism by a synthesis of historical, sociological, and psychological understandings. This purpose it is felt may be accomplished by a reevaluation of historical data and by regarding the ideology of racism as mental productions which can be examined from the point of view of the sociology of knowledge. Using the paradigm sug- gested by Merton,9 we shall attempt to answer such questions about Nordicism as: Where is the existential basis of these mental productions lo- cated? How are these mental productions related to the existential basis? Why do these exist and what are their manifest and latent functions? And when do the imputed relations of the existential base and knowledge obtain?

That the main thesis of racism has been proven false by scholars and scientists does not alter its effectiveness or importance as a world force; on the contrary, it raises questions as to why it has persisted though shown to be without validity. And as Scheler points out, "the sociology of knowledge is not concerned merely with tracing the

3 Cf. William A. Dunning, A History of Political The- ory from Rousseau to Spencer (New York: The Macmil- lan Company, 1920).

4 The history of racism has been capably treated by Louis L. Snyder, Race: A History of Modern Ethnic Theories (New York: Longmans Green, 1939); Jacques Barzun, The French Race, Theories of Its Origins and Their Social and Political Implications (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932); and Race: A Study in Modern Superstition (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1937), by the same author; Frank H. Hankins, op. cit.

5 Snyder, op. cit., p. 312.

6 Ruth Benedict, Race: Science and Politics (New York: Viking Press, 1945).

1Oliver Cromwell Cox, Caste, Class and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (Garden City, N. Y.: Double- day, 1948).

8 I. D. MacCrone, Race Attitudes in South Africa, EHistorical, Experimental and Psychological Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1937), p. 8.

1 Robert K. Merton, "The Sociology of Knowledge" in Gurvitch and Moore, Twentieth Century Sociology (New York: The Philosophical Press, 1945), p. 372.


existential basis of truth, but also of social illu- sions, superstitions, and socially conditioned errors and forms of deception.")10

The peoples of northwestern Europe and the United States have always been very conscious of the culture which they inherited from the classic civilizations of the Mediterranean basin; indeed, in common language "culture" is usually used to describe those parts of our culture which were acquired from Greece and Rome. We are perhaps less conscious of how much of our cultural heritage, our habits, and values were acquired from the ancient peoples of the North Sea basin. These cultural factors are less dramatic and evident because they are acquired in the subtle process of socialization, rather than through a foreign language or a formal educational institution, and have in this way endured through the ages passed from generation to generation. Thus past events are encysted in the social attitudes of today, and these events cannot be fully understood without reference to their origins and developmental history, for the present attitude represents merely the latest or contemporary phase of the total genetic process.

Barzun has pointed out the apparent paradox that modern, Nordic, racial ideology has originated in the writings of Latins such as Tacitus, Bougain- ville, and de Gobineau;11 these authors really used the Nordics as Samuel Johnson used the Chinese, or More the Utopians, to create invidious compari- sons as a critique of their own society. It is significant that these doctrines did not become very important in the ideology and politics of the Latin countries where many of them originated, but did achieve much greater influence in some northern European countries. This is understandable when it is realized that cultural diffusion is selective and that the culture of the ancient peoples of the North Sea Basin contained a rather complete racist theory which was integrated with their mythology and their total value system, and which in most respects paralleled the myths of modern racist dogma.

The Rigsthula12 is a cultural poem which de-

scribes the racial make-up, the functions and re- lationships of social classes in Viking society, and explains the origins of these classes and their function on a mythological basis. According to this poem it was the god Rig who created the different classes of society. Thrael, of the lowest class, is described as black-haired with wrinkled skin, rough hands and knotted knuckles, thick fingers, ugly face, twisted back, and big heels. Thrael's wife would hardly win any beauty contest either since she had, according to this account, crooked legs, stained feet, sunburned arms, and a flat nose. Their function as described by this work was to carry burdens all day, dig turf, spread dung, and herd swine and goats.

Karl, the yeoman, however, is pictured as sturdy and strong with a ruddy face and flashing eyes. It was his duty to manage the farm, build houses, and fashion other artifacts.

Mothir, the woman of the noble class, is described as having bright brows, a shining breast, and a neck "whiter than the new fallen snow." And her son, Jarl, by the god Rig, is portrayed in these words, "Blond he was, and bright his cheeks, grim as a snake's were his glowing eyes." Jarl's function as a warrior and ruler is described in detail; he, unlike either Thrael or Karl, is taught runes.

This poem like the rest of Norse mythology may be looked upon as a mental production which gave the Vikings explanations about nature, society, and themselves, gave them answers to questions they could answer in no other way, and therefore helped them to solve problems arising out of activ- ity in these spheres of life.

The thralls found in Scandinavia at the open- ing of the Viking Age were probably to a large extent descendants of the short, brunette, brachy- cephalic race which the tall, blond, long-headed

10 Max Scheler, Die Wissenformen und die Gesell- schaft (Leipzig: Der Neue-Geist Verlag, 1926), pp. 59-61. Quoted by Merton, op. cit., p. 383.

Jacques Barzun, The French Race, p. 12. 12The Rigsthula sometimes called Rigsmol is con-

tained in the Codex Wormanius, a manuscript of Snorri's Prose Edda. The Eddin poems were the work

of various authors of ancient Iceland and Norway. It is thought that the Rigsthula was reduced to writing in the last part of the Tenth Century, but that it had existed for many generations before this in oral form. The poem has been of considerable interest to European scholars. See for example Maximilien de Ring, Essai sur la Rigsmaal-Saga: et sur les Trois Classes de la So- ciete Germanique (Paris: Benjamin Duprat, 1854); Karl Von Lehman, Die Rigsbula (Rostock: Verlag der Stil- lerchen Hof und Universitatsbuchandlung, 1904). It has been translated into several languages including English. Cf. Henry Adams Bellows, Quotations from the Poetic Edda (Princeton: Princeton University Press and Scandinavian Foundation, 1936), pp. 201-17.

158 SOCIAL FORCES

Norse had conquered when they moved into Scandinavia.13 The Vikings, as they conducted their raiding and conquest expeditions to England, Ireland, and Continental Europe would bring back captives which were made slaves. These were for the most part shorter and darker than their captors. Thus certain racial characteristics such as short stature, dark hair and skin, and a flat nose became associated with inferior social status, and inferiority in general; while blondness, light skin, and certain facial features became connected with superiority. These ideas were supported by mythology and tended to persist even though a certain amount of race mixture went on generation after generation.

It is certain that much of the cultural mass, such as aspects of laws, language, values, usages, etc., of the modern nations of the North Sea basin can be traced to the culture described by Norse Sagas and other documents which have survived.14 It is therefore reasonable to hypothesize that the values regarding racial characteristics, social status, inferiority and superiority survived along with other elements and formed a fertile mental atmosphere in which racism could grow and achieve its rankest flowering in the age of Hitler.

There is considerable evidence to support this point of view. Of all the purveyors of Aryanism and its various forms, Arthur de Gobineau must be given the dubious honor of being the most important. It was he who with sublety and brilliance fused the scattered racist ideas of philosophers, ethnologists, and the musings and exuberances of the poets into a coherent intellectual whole, and in striking prose gave life to the dry scholarship of the linguistic paleontologists that preceded him. His abilities as a synthesizer and a writer sur- mounted the many errors of his ideas and the falsity of his basic premise, and helped make racism one of the most influential ideas of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries. In many respects de Gobineau is to racism what Adam Smith is to capitalism. It was de Gobineau who turned the "Aryan Controversy," chiefly concerned

with the location of the homeland of the Aryan language and people by philology and anthropol- ogy, into an ideology of racial superiority and inferiority that was to have such portentous consequences for the history of our times. Although de Gobineau used "Aryan" to describe his chosen people it is clear that he meant Nordic in the re- stricted sense. It was essentially his work which crystallized the Nordic myth and gave it the present form and direction. Those who followed him, Houston Stewart Chamberlain15 and Hans F. K. GQnther16 in Germany, and Madison Grant17 and Lothrop Stoddard18 in the United States developed and elaborated what he had started.

De Gobineau's central thesis that race and aristocracy are the most important elements in civilization and that the hope of the world has always been the fair-haired Aryan or Nordic was proposed in a four volume work, Essai sur l'inegalite des races humaines (1853-1855). Later (1879) he published Histoire d'Ottar Jarl, Pirate Norvegien con- querant du pays de Bray en Normandie, et de sa descendance. And it is significant for this paper that in a letter to Mm. Wagner he stated that the Essai was written in consequence of research begun on the history of his family and that it was written in part to prove scientifically the superiority of his own race. He believed that he was a direct de- scendant through Norman stock of Ottar Jarl, a Viking hero of ancient Norway. Furthermore, in a passage in Ottar Jarl he states that this book con- tinues his Essai and his Histoire des Perses which were written only to serve as prefaces.'9 Certainly de Gobineau in his research for Ottar Jarl must have come in contact with the values and ideas about race and aristocracy expressed in the Rigs- thula.

One of the great intellectual movements of the

18 For a discussion of slavery in ancient Scandinavia see A. E. Eriksen, "Traeldom hos Skandinavere" in Nordisk Universitets Tidsskrift (1861); A. Gjessing "Traeldom i Norge" in Annaler for Nordisk Oldkyndi- ghet og Historie (Kristiania, 1862).

14 Cf. M. Larson, The Earliest Norwegian Laws, Being the Gualathing Law and the Frostathing Law (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927).

15 Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Foundations of the Twentieth Century (London, 1911), translated from the original: Die Grundlagen des neunzehten Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1899).

16 Hans F. K. Gunther, Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes (Munich, 1930).

17 Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race (New York, 1916).

18 Lothrop Stoddard, Closing Tides of Color (New York, 1935); The Rising Tide of Color Against White Supremacy (New York, 1920); Revolt Against Civiliza- tion (New York, 1922).

19 Maurice Lange, Le Comte Arthur de Gobineau, Etude biographique et critique (Strausburg, 1924), p. 119. Quoted by Hankins, op. cit., p. 49.


Nineteenth Century, Romanticism, helped to make the peoples of Scandinavia, Germany, England, and America conscious of their Norse heritage. In his rejection of neo-classical themes the Ro- manticist sought inspiration in other directions, one of these sources being ancient Norse sagas and Teutonic ideas. Norse and Anglo-Saxon themes are important aspects of the Romantic movement in Scandinavia, England, and the United States.20 The same was true of Germany and it was no ac- cident that Houston Stewart Chamberlain, disciple of de Gobineau, who elaborated and popularized Gobinism, was an enthusiastic admirer of Richard Wagner who perhaps better tha anyone resur- rected and dramatized old Nordic myths in his The Ring of the Niebelungen. Wagner and Gobineau were good friends and the German master found great pleasure in being told that the Ring embodied the quintessence of de Gobineau's principles of German race superiority. Chamberlain's marriage to Wagner's daughter joined individuals who were already intimately spiritually related. That Hitler should find both Wagner's operas and the present Wagner family worthy of his intense patronage is therefore understandable.

It would appear then- that the central ideas of racism had been part of the intellectual atmosphere of northwestern Europe since the beginning of historical times and most probably long before, and that the Romantic movement created a renaissance and dramatization of Norse ideals in the Nineteenth Century. In fact, de Gobineau himself was essentially and typically a romanticist.

Though some forms of racist ideas were present in Spain, Portugal, and particularly France, racism never took root and grew to such virulent proportions in these countries even though their exploitation of colonial peoples created a situation in which one could expect such ideas to flourish. However, religious traditions, and the traditions of the Inquisition were strong in these countries and it was to this type of mental productions that the Spaniards and Portuguese turned for their rationalizations. The exploitation by the Latin colonial powers of the natives was no less brutal than that practiced by the colonizers from northwestern Europe, but it was justified by different premises. The Spaniards, for example, justified

their exploitation of native peoples on the basis that these people were pagans and therefore outside the pale of Christian ethics and consideration. It might be argued that, since the result was the same, whether exploitation was justified on a racial or religious basis had no significance. But this difference was to be of tremendous significance for the modern world. The difference of religion could be overcome by conversion, and in Spanish, Portuguese, and French colonies amalgamation was often accepted and even encouraged, while in English and Dutch colonies where racist ideas predominated amalgamation was usually strongly discouraged and proscribed, and intermarriage was the exception rather than the rule. This is one of the important facts which explains why the race problem is being solved through amalgamation in such countries as Brazil, while it is perhaps more acute than ever today in such countries as South Africa where English value systems pre- dominate.

On the other hand, not all the countries of northwestern Europe whose culture can be traced back to Norse and Teutonic origins have elaborated racism intellectually, nor has it found expression in political movements. The Scandinavians like other peoples have not been free from chauvinism, ethnocentrism, and extreme nationalism, but it appears to be correct to state that in modern times racism, so prevalent in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, has not appeared here. For example, Penka's thesis that Scandinavia was the cradle of the Aryans, which was popularized in England by G. H. Randall's The Cradle of the Aryans (1887), received little notice in Scandinavia, and the Scandinavian anthropologists Montilius and Sophus Muller did not assent.2' And even under the Nazi occupation of Norway and Den- mark when espousal of Nordicism had immediate and tangible rewards the doctrine gathered com- paratively few adherents. Thus in Scandinavia where the old Norse ideas of race and aristocracy should certainly be as strong as anywhere, significant ideological and political movements based on racism are conspicuously absent.

It would appear, therefore, that other factors besides the presence of racist traditions must be invoked to explain the apparent contradiction.

The other factor, which was present in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States and not in Scandinavia, was the historical situations in which

20 Cf. Frank Edgar Farley, Scandinavian Infinences on the English Romantic Movement (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1903); Josef Koerner, Niebelungenforschungen der deutschen Romatik (Leipzig: H. Hassel, 1911). 21 Hankins, op. cit., pp. 20, 21.

160 SOCIAL FORCES

the former countries became involved. Racism in Germany as an intellectual movement developed concomitantly with the strong drive for nationhood which culminated in the unification of Germany in 1871. It was given further impetus by German imperialism and reached its climax of development under Hitler who found it an effective weapon in his drive to recreate German power and self-respect after the disastrous defeat of World War I. It is probable that imperialism rather than nationalism was the dominant situational factor in Great Britain. And in the United States the presence of a large slave population in a society ideologically committed to liberty, equality, and Christian ethics played a decisive role. It is significant in this regard that the first English translation of de Gobineau was by H. Hotz of Montgomery, Alabama, whose labor of love was undertaken as a piece of pro-slavery propaganda.22 Furthermore, the people of the United States were engaged in the conquest and consolidation of a continental nation which involved the liquidation, removal, or forcible segregation of the original inhabitants who differed from themselves both racially and culturally.

These situational factors were not present in modern Scandinavia. Scandinavian countries were not engaged in imperialistic enterprises and the national states of Denmark and Sweden had been established for a long time. And Norway's nationalism, though not regained fully before 1905, was realized in a struggle where the contestants were fellow Scandinavians, very much alike in both culture and race. In other words, though the ideology of racism was readily available the logical and psychological necessity for it was lacking. In Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, however, both the cultural tradition and the historical situation created a favorable climate for racism to develop.

CONCLUSIONS

The existential basis of the racist ideas which were to be so fateful for the Twentieth Century

seem to have at least two essential loci. First a tradition of racism existed in the cultural mass of the nations who adopted it, and secondly, certain situations and conditions arose which made racism effective and consequential in countries where both factors were present. On the other hand, in countries where either the tradition or the situation was lacking racism proved to be of little consequence and socially ineffective.

The problem of the connection between this existential base and the ideas of Nordicism can be solved in terms of their functional relationship. It is apparent from existing documents that de Gobineau was motivated to produce what he did to "prove in a scientific way" the superiority of his own race and class. The relationship to the historical situation becomes clear when it is re- called that de Gobineau was a passionate aristocrat in an age where the status of all aristocrats was under attack by forces created by industrializa- tion and capitalism and liberated by the socialist movement. It was also against such a background of class conflict that Tacitus composed Germania,23 probably the first espousal of Nordicism. It would thus appear that the Marx-Engels views on the connectives between ideas and economic sub- structure would hold here; namely that ideas to be effective in a society must have pertinence for one or another of the conflicting classes. This view seems to be supported too by the fact that the Rigsthula was created in the Viking era by an aristocratic class which controlled a "capitalistic" society sharply stratified into classes of slaves, freedmen, land owners, nobles, and royalty.

However, the Marx-Engels conceptual scheme does not in the case of racism explain that some Germans, Britons, and Americans, no matter what their class position, have supported racism at various times to give political movements based on racism a broad base. In fact, Nazism in Ger- many, the Know-Nothings, and the Ku Klux Klan and Silver Shirts in the United States seem to draw the majority of their members not from the upper class but rather from classes of a com- paratively marginal economic position. Nor does the racism arising primarily out of nationalism seem to be explained completely within the class

22 "The full title read: 'The moral and intellectual diversity of races, with particular reference to their re- spective influence in the political history of mankind, from the French of Arthur de Gobineau, with an ana- lytical introduction and historical notes by H. Hotz to which is added an appendix by J. C. Nott.' " Snyder, op. cit., p. 114. Hotz translated only the first part. The first volume was translated by Adrian Collins (Put- nam's, 1915).

23 "It is in his thirty-page essay on Germany, Its Geography, Manners, Customs and Tribes that we find the combined elements of history and moralization which form the fruitful germ of the Nordic idea." Quoted by Barzun, The French Race, p. 20.

RACISM IN NORTH WESTERN EUROPE 161

warfare frame of reference. The humblest denizen of Limehouse as well as the aristocrat of Mayfair found spiritual sustenance and inspiration in Kip- ling's hymns to the destiny and superiority of England, and the idea of Anglo-Saxon superiority has always been dear to the heart of English- speaking peoples no matter what their position in the social structures of their societies. In World War I the solidarity of the socialist working class foundered on the rocks of nationalism, and today Communism has its Tito. And it was among the pioneers and colonists, usually not of the upper classes, that racism and the practices that follow therefrom were to be found in their most extreme form.

The problem is to find an explanation that will integrate societal and structural components as well as cultural and psychological elements involved in the genesis and persistence of racism. The common factors present in the predisposition- ing situations (class, race, ethnic or national group antagonism, and differentiation) are ego security threats inherent in superordination and subordination of groups and the individuals who identify themselves or are identified with these groups (classes, ethnic, racial, or national groups). It is this common element which points to a possible solution. Since groups are composed of interacting persons and the policies of groups are the result of the collectively organized attitudes of these persons, the explanation of the occurrence of racism should logically be looked for in the mechanism of personality integration. The personality with its intense need for security and self-esteem evokes mechanisms of a protective nature; it seeks to neutralize whatever disturbs it by avoiding, for- getting, or in other ways nullifying whatever is troublesome. Furthermore, the exigencies of situations in which a person finds himself may lead to

powerful antagonistic drives between idealistic and moral attitudes and values and ego-centric organic strivings and needs. Personality integration is achieved when the conflicting or competing demands or psychic conflicts are kept to a mini- mum.

It is clear from an analysis of racism that its specific tenets, ideas, and values facilitate such mental mechanisms of personality integration as rationalization, compensation, displacement, pro- jection, identification, introjection, and phantasy. Conquest, nationalism, imperialism, class, and racial strife are movements which sharpen the consciousness of differentiation, superordination, and subordination, and thus bring into play the psychological mechanisms which sustain the ego in the adventurous struggle between groups and individuals.

The kinds of mental productions which a people create to meet such needs are limited and their character determined by the cultural heritage which they have at their disposal at the moment of need. The mental productions which connected the specific racial features of blondness, blue eyes, tallness, light complexion, etc. with superiority, and dark hair, short stature, dark skin, etc., with inferiority were present in the cultural traditions of the ancient peoples whose descendants created the modern nations of northwestern Europe and North America. The function of Romanticism was to create a renaissance of these traditions latent in the cultural mass; that of Social Darwinism to give them a "scientific basis" just at the time when a favorable psychological climate for their acceptance and growth had been created by conquest, nationalism, and imperialism. Thus the fateful racist doctrine of Nordicism arose, persisted and grew to its fearful proportions nurtured on human needs created by the fortuitous juxta- position of vast historical events in time and space.

Article Contentsp. 155p. 156p. 157p. 158p. 159p. 160p. 161

Issue Table of ContentsSocial Forces, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Dec., 1951), pp. 129-256Some Implications of Organization for Social Research [pp. 129 - 134]Some Aspects of Class, Status, and Power Relations in England [pp. 134 - 140]The Problem of the Concept of Role-A Re-Survey of the Literature [pp. 141 - 149]The Sociology of Concentration Camps [pp. 150 - 155]Some Historical and Theoretical Bases of Racism in Northwestern Europe [pp. 155 - 161]The Ideology of the "Dixiecrat" Movement [pp. 162 - 171]Where the South Begins: The Northern Limit of the Cis-Appalachian South in Terms of Settlement Landscape [pp. 172 - 178]The Security Functions of Cultural Systems [pp. 179 - 184]Personnel in Culture Change: A Test of Hypothesis [pp. 185 - 189]The Dimensions of Social Change in the U.S.A. as Determined by P-Technique [pp. 190 - 201]Social Equilibrium and the Psychodynamic Mechanisms [pp. 201 - 209]Population Pressure and Other Factors Affecting Net Rural-Urban Migration [pp. 209 - 215]Aspects of the Cultural Background of Premarital Pregnancies in Denmark [pp. 215 - 219]Lonely Hearts Clubs Viewed Sociologically [pp. 219 - 222]Determinants of Business Success in a Small Western City: Summary of a Questionnaire Study of 83 Business Owners [pp. 223 - 231]Library and Workshopuntitled [pp. 232 - 235]untitled [pp. 235 - 236]untitled [pp. 236 - 237]untitled [pp. 237 - 238]untitled [p. 238]untitled [pp. 238 - 240]untitled [pp. 240 - 241]untitled [p. 241]untitled [pp. 242 - 243]untitled [pp. 243 - 244]untitled [p. 244]untitled [p. 245]untitled [pp. 245 - 246]untitled [p. 246]untitled [pp. 246 - 247]untitled [pp. 247 - 248]untitled [pp. 248 - 249]untitled [p. 249]New Books Received [pp. 249 - 251]

Editorial: Teaching College Sociology [pp. 252 - 256]

Documents

Racism in Northwestern Europe