British colonial racism framed itself as progressivist educability versus boer naturalism

Evidence

The British at the Cape, by contrast, are taken in this narrative, not least by themselves and their legatees, to represent the source and force of racial progress, of standing not for inherent incapacity but for educability and possibility. Of inherent equality in reason’s and God’s name. The British were the bearers of civilization to those not yet provided it but who had no inherent incapacity preventing them from such acquisition. Supporters of evolution versus the spoilers of racial regression, the advocates of a civilizing Christianity. This, I have argued in The Racial State, represents the racial historicism of Millian progressivist liberalism contra the racist naturalism of Carlylean conservatism. It sees itself as level-headed Anglican liberalism set against the arrogant legacy of radical continental Reformation. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1394

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the distinction between racial historicism (Millian progressivist liberalism) and racist naturalism (Carlylean conservatism) as rival colonial racisms.
• XREF: The historicism-versus-naturalism distinction echoes the earlier chapter’s framing of racial neoliberalism and connects to Goldberg’s own The Racial State.
• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that enlightened progressivist liberalism itself functions as a racial ideology — civilizing mission as racial progress — is a dense, paradigm-shifting claim worth sitting with.