ABSTRACT
This chapter inquires into the relationship between racial structure and ideologies of cultural difference, and suggests that racial characterizations in these ideologies, and the interaction between ideologies, might serve as an indication of the state of race relations in a society. Dehumanization is the most common process in the characterization of subordinate races by a dominant race. It is expressed, in its extreme form, in conceptions of the subject race as animals or demons or objects, and in a less extreme form, in the conception that the subject race is characterized by a falling-off from the fullness of human quality and human dignity. Ideologies of the ruling race are infinitely more effective, as instruments of domination, if they are accepted by members of the subordinate race, and a common theme in the literature of black protest is precisely this acceptance by subject races of the negation of their culture and of themselves.
