ABSTRACT
All Americans, in one way or another, must live with the history and legacy of racism. Humans have stigmatized one another on the basis of their presumed tribal status since different bands of humanity came into contact with one another. Extermination is the most extreme form of tribal stigma; at the very least, it definitively declares other categories of humans to be the other different, inferior, subhuman. Genocide, the deliberate attempt to wipe an entire category of humanity off the planet was the most extreme possible expression of tribal stigma. Ethnic stigma is a prejudice felt and expressed by members of one category against another; the sender enacts, conveys, and communicates it, and, if its message is successful, the target thereby possesses it. Bias against the members of a racial, national, religious, or tribal category runs the gamut. “Anti-racism,” cynically quipped Ishmael Reed, gadfly Black poet, novelist, and curmudgeon, is “the new yoga”.
