Racism And Universalism

The relationship between racism and universalism were symbiotic from the very beginning. In order to define the universal human being as rational – an imperative of Enlightenment – it was necessary to define who could not be viewed as such. Resultant, this led to the categori-zation of people into the ‘superior’ and the ‘inferior’, the differentiation upon which racism is built. The interdependence of racism and universalism stems from the fact that
“(…) the idea of universal humanity was constructed in the image of the white European, against the non-European, the blacks in the colonies and the internal others, [and that is why] the appli-cation of the essence of humanity, as it was defined by European thinkers, to all men and women was impossible from the outset. It is simply not possible for those who do not comply with a defini-tion of humanity – rationality, individuality, white aesthetics – to be considered …show more content…
The first function was to determine the conflicts between the different European states, each considered as unifying one ‘race’ of people within them. The second, more dura-ble function was to distinguish between different groups of people both within and between societies, creating hierarchies that ultimately placed the Europeans at the top. By the begin-ning of the twentieth century racism took on two dimensions, an external and an internal one that were mutually complementary. Externally, racism served to explain the differences be-tween Europeans and the ‘natives’ in the colonies. It served to justify both direct domination of the colonized and the European civilizing missions in the colonies. Internally racism served to define the threat within the state associated with the racially different (Lentin & Lentin, 2006; Goldberg, 2002). I will now turn towards how exactly racism evolved historically under European colonial domination and