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Ancient and modern

Racism and the destructive power of language

19 September 2020

9:00 AM

19 September 2020

9:00 AM

Pursuing last week’s theme, this week’s column raises the question: if there is no such thing as ‘race’ — since all humans belong to the same subspecies — why is there such a thing as racism? The modern answer is that race is (yawn) a ‘social construct’. But in the light of a famous passage in the 5th century BC by Thucydides, there is a case for saying that racism is the antisocial construct.

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