Word.ws English Dictionary

neoracism

neoracism noun: discrimination or prejudice based on nationality and ethnicity or cultural differences.

Noun

neoracism (countable and uncountable, plural neoracisms)

  1. (uncountable) Discrimination or prejudice based on nationality and ethnicity or cultural differences.
    • What is new and different about neoracism is denial, including a determination to deny "the other" any voice or space in the mainstream.2002, Kate A. Berry, Martha L. Henderson, Geographical Identities of Ethnic America: Race, Space, and Place, →ISBN
    • Whereas racism is traditionally based on one's physical appearance and stereotypes associated with an individual's race, neoracism extends racism to include stereotypes about one's country of origin. Neoracism is based on the perception of superiority of cultures and national order […] According to...2012, Brian Pusser, Ken Kempner, Simon Marginson, Universities and the Public Sphere, →ISBN
  2. (countable) An instance of neoracism, or a type of neoracism that targets a particular nationality.
    • In the France of today the tendency to 'keep the two stories separate' has, I think, very serious social and political consequences, consequences that are being played out in the rise of the various neoracisms of the 1980s and 1990s that focus on the figure of the immigrant worker.2000, Andy Hollis, Beyond Boundaries: Textual Representations of European Identity, →ISBN
    • After Race centrally holds that race is a biological myth at long last invalidated by science, but now dangerously re-created because scholars persist in using the term. Such scholars thereby decisively aid the rise of culturally based neoracisms and even the recrudescence of biological racism.2007, Michael Yates, More Unequal: Aspects of Class in the United States, →ISBN, page 73
  3. (derogatory, uncountable) An ideology that rejects the idea of color blindness and believes in different treatment for different races.
    • […] opposing all forms [of] racism, including neoracism.
      JANET: Martin Luther King would have been super-antiracist, but CRT progressives minimize King's accomplishments.2021, Stephen Waters, Individuals, Journalism, and Society Epilogue-Lessons learned
    • Bestselling author and acclaimed linguist John McWhorter argues that an illiberal neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting black communities and weakening the social fabric. We're told to read books and listen to music by people of colour but that wearing certain clothes is 'appropriation.'2023, Mary Harrington, Feminism Against Progress

Examples of neoracism in a sentence

  • Whereas racism is traditionally based on one's physical appearance and stereotypes associated with an individual's race, neoracism extends racism to include stereotypes about one's country of origin.2012, Brian Pusser, Ken Kempner, Simon Marginson, Universities and the Public Sphere, →ISBN:
  • A stream of European authors differentiate between overt and individual 'classic,' biological racism and covert and institutional cultural neoracism (Fréjuté-Rakauskiené 2006: 13).2012, Reinventing Race, Reinventing Racism, →ISBN, page 382:
  • Stolke (1995), on the other hand, considers the characterization of contemporary anti-immigrant rhetoric as a neoracism to be misleading.2011, Christopher Lawrence, Blood and Oranges: Immigrant Labor and European Markets in Rural Greece, →ISBN:

Forms of neoracism

pluralneoracisms
alternative formneo-racism

Origin of neoracism

* neo- + racism * (ideology of different treatment for different races): 21st century.

Questions about neoracism

What does neoracism mean?
Neoracism means discrimination or prejudice based on nationality and ethnicity or cultural differences.
How do you use neoracism in a sentence?
Whereas racism is traditionally based on one's physical appearance and stereotypes associated with an individual's race, neoracism extends racism to include stereotypes about one's country of origin.
What part of speech is neoracism?
Neoracism is a noun.
What is the plural of neoracism?
The plural of neoracism is neoracisms.

Words near neoracism in the dictionary

  1. neopuritans
  2. Neopythagorean
  3. Neopythagoreanism
  4. Neopythagoreans
  5. neoquassin
  6. neoracism
  7. neoracisms
  8. neoracist
  9. neoracists
  10. neoreaction
  11. neoreactionaries

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: neoracism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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