L'INVENZIONE DELLA RAZZA HA SCONFITTO IL RAZZISMO

Slate chief political correspondent Jamelle Bouie set off a heated online debate with a series of tweets[1] claiming “the concept of race was birthed by the Enlightenment,”[2] which then sparked a full-length article fleshing out his position.[3] His key claim is that colonialism, slavery, imperialism, and racism in general were not “incidental developments or the mere remnants of earlier prejudice.”
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PROBLEMA

For example, antisemitism is a late 19th century word. No one before the late 19th century identified as an antisemite, but claiming that antisemitism didn’t exist before then is absurd, and clearly not what Bouie is getting at.

My critique of Bouie will proceed as follows: first, I will establish the universal nature of prejudice against outgroup and advance a speculative hypothesis on the dynamics of how this manifested in complex agrarian societies in general, exploring examples in antiquity, early Islamic history, and Medieval Iberian antisemitism. These sections will seek to lay crucial context rather than directly contradict Bouie, who acknowledges examples such as these.[6]

Once this is established, I will proceed to the key points which undermine the specific culpability of the Enlightenment: the universalism of its main thinkers, and the environmental and institutionaltheories of racial and ethnic differentiation which made up the bulk of their writings on the matter (with important exceptions such as David Hume and especially Immanuel Kant). And finally, the critique of the Enlightenment passes over the role of the Counter-Enlightenment, which was particularistic and directly involved in the development of a biologically-based “scientific” racism.

RAZZA

L'invenzione del concetto di "razza biologica", dovuto all'illuminismo, ha posto le basi per combattere il razzismo da sempre presente nella storia.

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/did-the-enlightenment-give-rise-to-racism/