Racism, claiming racial hierarchy in ability and morality, explicitly subjugates racially marginalized groups, while racialism is more subtle and less hierarchical. The claim involved there being objectively different races, without implying inherent rule by some over others. Still, under this theory, white Afrikaners were considered uniquely destined for greatness. The term racialism has been largely phased out, with the term race realism being a more modern equivalent. Similar to South African liberationists, we in the modern West, often object to separating the human species into biological stereotypes, because they categorize people into groups based on arbitrarily chosen combinations of unchanging physical traits. In fact, the term racism has come to encompass this thought entirely, which probably explains why the term “race realism” is used less than “racialism”. Reading this, you might think of defeating the strict category of sex along with sexism as a parallel lesson to be drawn. However, the two cannot be equated in a legal or social sense.

Using that same logic, some progressive activists deride gender essentialism–viewing masculinity and femininity as immutable based on the biological birth sexes of male and female—as having the same relationship with sexism that race realism does to racism. 

The goals of establishing social, economic, racial and environmental equality are certainly laudable. But there is an all too often forgetfulness of the tremendous difference between racism – dividing people into groups based on arbitrary sets of  immutable characteristics to deny some of them a respected place in society–and sexism–establishing gender based on innate sexual difference between men and women.

This is not, in fact, too far off from what the racially progressive revolutionaries implemented in South Africa. They enshrined in its constitution the prohibition of discrimination on race and sex, on an equal basis. However, this prohibition differentiates the two in a key way, establishing “non-racialism and non-sexism” as fundamental values of the Republic. The framers of the new South African constitution could have called for a non-racist and a non-sexist society – but this would still have allowed the existence of racial categories, which they understood to be inherently oppressive. Alternatively, they could have called for a non racial and a non sexual society. But what would that have looked like? I like to think that most of us have long accepted that we are not, in fact, racial beings. But to say that we are not sexual beings? That seems a harder sell. For better or worse, sexual difference – whatever social meanings we ascribe to it – functions differently from racial, ethnic or cultural differences. 

In taking issue with the presumed  equivalence between racism and sexism, my chief concern I am expressing is not that sexism is not as bad as racism, but that it is easier to separate sexism from the existence of sex than it is racism from the existence of race. 

If a law prohibits women from the presidency on the basis that they are weak and must be confined to the home, that law can be dismissed and that reasoning rejected by maintaining that women have the same capacity as men for public office–the female sex is just as qualified in politics as the male–while maintaining the category of sex. Therefore, this would be separate from any attempt or campaign to erase sex from sports, bathrooms, or any other aspect of society with a direct physical, biological basis. If a state made the same prohibition on race, as our country did to African Americans, it couldn’t be separated from the racial categories themselves, as there’s no single basis of race to which every other racial characteristic is derivative. Thus, you would have to eliminate all racial discrimination, segregation and consideration. 

While racism involves the categorization of immutable characteristics into arbitrary groups of people, the character of sex is a fundamental one–not meticulously crafted to designate one ruling group and one subordinate group, but one that pervades every society: all nations and cultures throughout history have highly honored persons both male and female.