Abstract
This article deals with the origins of postwar anti-racism from a historical perspective. It examines political and theoretical aspects of two subjects. First, countermovements against Nazism which motivated postwar anti-racism: 1) Anti-racist network initiated by Ignaz Zollschan and his Zionism; 2) Franz Boas's 'Scientists' Manifesto' followed by resolutions and manifestoes which were issued by American university professors and academic societies; and 3) 'Geneticists' Manifesto' by left wing geneticists criticizing Nazi science from their standpoint of eugenics. Second were two statements on race by UNESCO (1950, 1951) which started the anti-racist campaign shortly after the war. Analyzing these two statements, we find changes in the concept of race and in the way of thinking about the difference related to human groups. In the end, we characterize postwar anti-racism as institutionalized metapolitics makes recognizing the differences among human beings or human groups as a universal value. It could be possible to conceive recent forms of racism as a kind of challenge to the metapolitics of that universal value.
