Racism Book: A Brief History of Racism: From the Roman Empire to North America

University Press returns with another short and captivating book – a brief history of racism.

Racism is the belief that different races possess certain qualities or abilities that make them inferior or superior to one another. Racism is nothing new, of course. Trade, migration, and war have introduced different races of people to each other for thousands of years. Some of those introductions have resulted in peaceful alliances, joint business ventures, and life-saving innovations. But many of those introductions have revealed common human weaknesses: cowardly fear, willful ignorance, and unspeakable cruelty.

From the proto-racism of the ancient Greco-Roman world, to medieval antisemitism, to racism in America, to the Armenian Genocide, to the Holocaust, to the Soviet deportations from Lithuania, to the Rwandan Genocide, to the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, racism has managed to grotesquely disfigure billions of human minds with hate while unleashing soul-crushing, life-destroying violence on an industrial scale. Yet, there is progress. And there is hope.

This short book peels back the veil and provides a brief glimpse into the heart-wrenching history of racism – a glimpse that you can read in about an hour.