The 4 differences between xenophobia and racism

In this highly globalized world, the dynamics of inequality have reached a much larger scale than before. Today, it is much easier for larger proportions of a country's population to come into contact with people from other places, or belonging to other ethnic groups.

All of this means that discrimination based on where you come from or the culture you belong to is expressed in a very visible way. Of course, to speak properly, you have to understand the forms that this discrimination takes. Therefore, in this article we will see what they are the differences between xenophobia and racism, two types of hostile bias towards people considered “outsiders”.

• Related article: "The 16 types of discrimination (and their causes)"

Differences between racism and xenophobia

Racism and xenophobia are two phenomena linked to each other, since in both there is an element of rejection of the different that works in a logic of identification with the group and exclusion of those who do not fall within this category.

However, they differ in very important aspects that allow us to understand how they express themselves in society; For this reason, it is necessary to know how to distinguish between xenophobia and racism in order to address these problems by directing our attention to what they really are, without falling into errors resulting from confusion.

Of course, it must be taken into account that these two types of discrimination do not have fully defined limits, and often overlap; For this reason, many times people with xenophobic or racist behaviors treat ethnic groups and nationalities as if they were races, and vice versa.

With that said, let's see the differences that allow us to distinguish between these two concepts.

1. Racism is based on racialization, xenophobia at borders

Currently it is known that human races do not exist as biological entities, but as anthropological categories and social psychology. That is to say, that the typical classification of the different races that distinguishes between whites, blacks and Mongoloids (sometimes also reserves a separate category to Native Americans) is a mirage from the point of view of biology and genetics, a product of historical dynamics and processes of discrimination.

For this reason, those who are the target of racist attacks, physical or of any other type, are so as racialized people; that is to say, people who are perceived as belonging to a race, although this race is an arbitrarily defined concept. Of course, the definition of race is usually based on physical features: skin color, eye shape, hair type, etc.

In the case of xenophobia, the boundaries that separate the group to which one belongs and the groups to which belong to others are also historical constructions (borders and linguistic limits, for example), but they do not have a biological component and do not rely heavily on aesthetics of people's bodily features.

• You may be interested in: "Scientific racism: what it is and how it transforms science to legitimize itself"

2. Xenophobia appeals to culture

Another difference between xenophobia and racism is that the former focuses its discourse on the preservation of its own culture: rituals and traditions, religion, language, lifestyle and the like, while racism appeals to entities hypothetically belonging to our biology.

Thus, an unequivocally xenophobic message would be, for example, one that encourages expel foreigners because they belong to another religion, while a racist discourse would call for preserving racial purity so as not to mix with individuals who supposedly they are profoundly incompatible with us for having other psychological and biological traits: different level of intelligence, propensity for aggressiveness, etc

Thus, xenophobia speaks of cultural elements that are transmitted from generation to generation through education, imitation and learning, while racism speaks of genetically transmitted elements through reproduction, and which according to xenophobes are innate traits.

3. Racism seeks to legitimize itself through psychometrics and basic psychology, xenophobia through sociology

As we have seen, xenophobia differs from racism in that it does not appeal so much to traits studied by basic psychology and biology, but rather to statistics describing cultural dynamics.

For this reason, racism tries to rely on experimental and psychometric studies that have relatively small samples, while xenophobia resorts to sociological studies. Of course, it must be taken into account that the size of the sample that the studies have does not serve to know if an investigation is valid or not.

4. Racism is less supportive of integration

Neither from racism nor from xenophobia is there confidence in the ability of discriminated groups to adapt to societies to which in theory "they do not belong".

However, from xenophobic perspectives, it is not uncommon to believe that in small numbers certain individuals of other ethnic groups can reach adopt the customs and ways of thinking of the people considered typical of the place, while racism also denies the possibility of these supposedly anecdotal cases of integration, since a race cannot be changed as it is hypothetically a biological entity linked to genetics of the individual.

Bibliographic references:

• Garner, S. (2009). Racisms: An Introduction. Sage.
• Rubenstein, H. L., Cohn-Sherbok, D. C., Edelheit, A. J., Rubinstein, W. d. (2002). The Jews in the Modern World, Oxford University Press.