COMMENT | This article, which was first published in The Sun on Dec 18, 2008, is still very relevant today as it explains how racism originated and the difference between racism in the West and racialism in developing countries such as Malaysia.

At the time, this writer started a new column when Barack Obama was elected as the first black president of the USA.

What exactly is racism and what are its origins? And how is racism different from racialism or communalism?

Let’s go back about 500 years to the rise of European colonialism, the rivalry for control among these imperial powers, and the conquest of Africa, the Americas and Asia.

The colonies were plundered and their natural resources were exploited to meet the growing demand for raw materials to drive the emerging Industrial Revolution in the West.

With the demand for labour to work in plantations in the Americas and West Indies, the colonial powers also started the African slave trade during this period.

The suffering and torture of these slaves were so brutal that many slaves preferred to die by refusing to be fed or by jumping overboard into the ocean. Entire communities and families in Africa were uprooted, separated, and decimated.

True, slavery existed thousands of years earlier since the emergence of classed society and the conquest for new land but this new slave trade...