Even if from a medical and biological point of view, all of humankind belongs to one race, namely the human race (as the UNESCO Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice [1978] emphasized), all human beings belong to a single species and are descended from a common stock. Legal and political language use the term races in the plural sense in order to cover different ethnicities or geographically characterizable subgroups, such as Caucasians, Africans, Mongoloids. Because of the well-established (but erroneous) custom, political and legal language is still using this term.

Racism

Racism as a policy is more than the affirmation or the recognition of special human characteristics linked to color, facial characteristics, or other visible specificities. Racism as a policy attributes a distinct legal status to certain members of a society. Racism can be...