Racists

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who exhibits prejudice or discrimination against individuals based on their race, believing in the superiority of their own race
2. An individual who holds negative attitudes and beliefs towards people of different racial backgrounds, often leading to systemic injustice
3. Someone who actively promotes or supports ideologies that reject racial equality and perpetuate racial stereotypes

Etymology: "Racists" is the plural of "racist," a noun for people who discriminate on the basis of race. The noun dates from 1932, and it was built from "racism," which appeared in 1928, so the people word came after the belief system it named. Both words grew from "race" with the suffix "-ism" for doctrine and "-ist" for a person who holds it. The older term was "racialist," first recorded in 1910, which the newer word gradually replaced. Its French counterpart, "raciste," is attested much earlier, from 1892, so the French term predates the English one by about four decades. English speakers therefore borrowed the idea and its vocabulary from French-language thinking about race rather than inventing the pattern from scratch.

Synonyms: bigots, supremacists, discriminators, intolerants

Antonyms: egalitarians, integrationists, anti-racists, tolerants