This monograph on racism briefly goes through various reportsprepared by internationai organizations on the comtemporary forms ofracism. It tries to define racism, racial discrimination and racial prejudice aswell as ethnicity and ethnocentrism. It dwells on individual and grouppsychologies in order to understand the underlining mechanisms vvhich maylead to racism in times of acute stress.We shall attempt in this study to examine the causes of racism inEurope in a historical perspective. As Encyclopedia Britannica(Macropaedia, Vol. 15, pp. 359-366) points out (and we summarize in thefollowing paragraphs), not only is racism a recent phenomenon in historyand the exception rather than the rule as compared to the universal nature ofethnocentrism, it also seems to occur in some parts of the world and not inothers.