proto-racist
proto-racist adjective: characteristic of proto-racism.
Adjective
proto-racist (comparative more proto-racist, superlative most proto-racist)
- Characteristic of proto-racism.
- Racist doctrines were not fully utilized to justify slavery in the Americas until the nineteenth century (though proto-racist ideas were so employed in the previous two centuries), in part because slavery was not thought to require a moral justification, and in part because the concept of "race"...2002, Lawrence Blum, "I'm Not a Racist, But . . .": The Moral Quandary of Race, →ISBN, page 5
- Hannaford insists that later thinkers from the Renaissance onwards selected bits from Greek texts that fitted with their ideas about race, thus casting thinkers such as Aristotle and Plato as proto-racist and misunderstanding the real character of Greek ideas.2015, Peter Wade, Race, →ISBN, page 30
Noun
proto-racist (plural proto-racists)
- A person who displays protoracist attitudes or behaviors.
- This assumption had its origins in the ideas of nineteenth-century critics of utilitiarianism. These critics — they might be romantics, historicists, nationalists, or proto-racists — held that utilitarianism took individuals and their interests as the building blocks of social and political theory...2005, Bart Schultz, Georgios Varouxakis, Utilitarianism and Empire, →ISBN, page 179
- The church fathers allegorized biblical references to Ethiopians (in the LXX and New Testament) as symbols for sin, going so far as to depict devils as black Ethiopians; nevertheless, historians still view them as inheritors of the classical literary tradition that employed black-white color...2008, Ruben Rosario Rodriguez, Racism and God-Talk: A Latino/a Perspective, →ISBN, page 31
- A person who has the potential to become a racist.
- If they had asked, they might have found that the last thing which many minority ethnic people wanted was anti-fascist and anti-racist marches which alerted proto-racists and fascists to the fact that they had a vulnerable minority ethnic population in their midst.1998, Paul Hainsworth, Divided Society: Ethnic Minorities and Racism in Northern Ireland, →ISBN
- A critical antiracism also points to the need to move away from 'doctrinaire' (MacDonald et al, 1989) and dogmatic forms of antiracism which homogenize and caricature Whites as proto-racists and Blacks as victims.2005, Stephen May, Critical Multiculturalism, →ISBN
Examples of proto-racist in a sentence
- Yet that did not make them racists or proto-racists, but pragmatic businessmen.2011, Judith Ridner, A Town In-Between, →ISBN, page 93:
- This also means that one cannot work with the assumptions that all 'whites' are necessarily and only proto-racists, or that all 'blacks' are necessarily and always victims.2014, Nigel Norris, Curriculum and the Teacher, →ISBN:
Forms of proto-racist
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more proto-racist |
| superlative | most proto-racist |
| alternative form | protoracist |
| Noun | |
| plural | proto-racists |
Origin of proto-racist
From proto- + racist.
Questions about proto-racist
- What does proto-racist mean?
- Proto-racist means characteristic of proto-racism.
- How do you use proto-racist in a sentence?
- Yet that did not make them racists or proto-racists, but pragmatic businessmen.
- What part of speech is proto-racist?
- Proto-racist can be an adjective or a noun.
Words near proto-racist in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: proto-racist (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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Cite this entry: “proto-racist.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/proto-racist. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.