Many people have agreed that racial ideology has caused the impoverishment of great numbers of people at tremendous cost, as well as the decline of their quality of life. When the matter of race is defined, applied, and institutionalized in everyday life, racial ideology happens. At this point, the matter of race becomes a scientific, religious, and political definition.

Racial ideology is also present when the definition of race becomes an issue in society where it is contested and debated upon. Most impotently, racial ideology rears its ugly head when the categories of race are formed, transformed, destroyed, and revised. Such is the case of the African-Americans in the US up until the Civil Rights Movement (and to this day, if one looks closely enough at the newfangled nuances of this phenomenon). All these become racial ideology when the treatment of race becomes a central axis of social relations.

Racial ideology is also a result of lengthy social discussions and resolutions of pre-existing racial elements, as well as a product of the struggle of competing debates. An example of this in the United States is when the racial category of “black” evolved with the consolidation of racial slavery. People of African descent in the US were all grouped into the racial category of “black” by an ideology of exploitation based on the racial logic of ‘Africans in America,’ a group that previously had specific identities of Ibo, Yoruba, Fulani, etc. This further evolved into the consolidated concept of racial slavery.

The ethnic and native origins gave way to a label that was eventually categorized derisively as ‘inferior.’ In no time at all, this ‘inferiority’ of the labeled ‘race’ was utilized against the race to marginalize the ‘inferior’ people. They were then denied some basic rights, impoverishing them along the way and putting them at an excruciating disadvantage.

The hunt for the last Nazis is a case of turning the tables on racial ideology by, what else, another version of racial ideology. Former Nazi guards who are still alive are now old, doddering, poor men who escaped from their country when their kind was being hunted down.

Most people assert that these poor old men must face up to deportation and punishment for their crimes of more than 60 years ago, even if they had no choice but become Nazi guards in a totally authoritarian regime that more than bordered on insanity.

The last remaining Nazis from World War II are approaching the end of their lives. Is it not our version and revision of racial ideology at play when we still find it worthwhile to  pursue them? Racism has always been a colorful word.

Image