| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Racism: A Short History. By George M. Fredrickson. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. xii, 207 pp. $22.95, ISBN 0-691-00899-X.)

Hesham Mohammed Ali Hadayet opened fire upon an El Al desk at Los Angeles International Airport last July 4, murdering two people before security officers killed him. An Egyptian citizen working in the United States, Hadayet reportedly believed that Israel had sent prostitutes infected with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) to Egypt in order to spread AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) across his homeland. 1

However warped or hateful, was this man a racist? George M. Fredrickson would probably answer 'no.' In this brief but brilliant survey, Fredrickson acknowledges that a 'fear of sexual pollution or violation' permeated the last century's most overtly racist regimes: Nazi Germany, the prewar United States South, and postwar South Africa. To Fredrickson, though, racism encompasses more than mere hatred. Racists assign immutable qualities to the despised Other, blaming its alleged perfidy upon evil 'blood' or ancestry. Most of all, racism involves the subjugation--or, in the worst case, the elimination--of its victims. We will never know if Hadayet regarded Israelis (or Jews) as inherently devious, sinister, or licentious. Since his crime did not reflect a generalized pattern of group domination in Egypt, though, Fredrickson would not tag him as a racist. . . .

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