A/49/677 English Page 7 specific sense, racism denotes a theory, which purports to be scientific but is in reality pseudo-scientific, of the immutable natural (or biological) inequality of human races, which leads to contempt, hatred, exclusion and persecution or even extermination. 3/ It differs in this respect from the stereotypes existing in many of the world’s societies, which are not in themselves of any consequence but which may occasionally generate ethnic or religious tensions or conflicts that are frequently comparable to racism. 21. In modern times, the notion of racism is associated in particular with the names of Arthur de Gobineau 4/ and his disciples, Madison Grant, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Baur, Fischer, Lenz and Günther. It appeared in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the context of the white man’s claim to superiority - the "white man’s burden" of carrying civilization to the other peoples of the world - over certain minorities living in Europe, including the Jews (see para. 37 below), and such peoples as the Slavs 5/ as well as Blacks and other peoples enslaved and subjugated by colonial expansion. 6/ 22. Even Holy Scripture has been used to underpin and justify racism by reference to the curse of Shem and his descendants, supposedly the Blacks, and to the chosen people or, alternatively, to the crime of deicide, with the Jews being accused of killing Jesus Christ. The outcome was slavery and the Black slave trade, the age-old bleeding of Africa, and anti-Semitism, compounded by the economic power of the Jews. 23. Some authors have traced back to the great Greek philosopher Aristotle the theory of a hierarchy among men and peoples and of the natural inferiority of some peoples that destined them to slavery. Quoting Michael Banton, Hernán Cruz writes that, for Aristotle, "the people living in northern Europe were brave, but lacking in intelligence and consequently unfitted for political organization or the exercise of power. Asiatics were inventive and intelligent, but lacking in spirit. The Greeks, however, being geographically well situated, were accordingly by nature fitted to rule the earth. Aristotle maintained that slavery was a natural state of affairs. ’Those who are so much inferior to others as is the body to the soul, and beasts to men, are by nature slaves and benefit, like all inferiors, from living under the rule of a master.’" 7/ Thus do racial prejudices arise which persist undiminished to this day. 8/ 24. Social science and humanities specialists agree that in the wake of the scientific and cultural demolishing of racist myths by UNESCO, the biologically based view of the phenomenon has recently lost ground among racism’s staunchest adherents to a new concept centred on the hierarchy of cultures and their fundamental incommunicability. 9/ Thus those who advocate such a hierarchy are unaware of or deliberately misconstrue the latest scholarly and scientific literature, particularly that produced by UNESCO, on race and culture, the principles of equal dignity of the human individual, the affirmation of cultural identities and cultural diversity, values universally recognized at the World Conference on Cultural Policies, organized by UNESCO at Mexico City in 1982, and /...