Cox held that racial prejudice emerged with Western capitalism and colonization

Evidence

This provoked the dissent of his principal critic, the black Trinidadborn sociologist Oliver Cromwell Cox, who insisted that racial prejudice as it was known in the twentieth century had not existed before the European colonization of the Americas. It developed concomitantly with Western capitalism so that “race relations … are labor-capital-proflts relationships” (Cox, 1948:336). Nevertheless, he agreed with Park that interpersonal relations could be racial only if the parties were conscious of their differences as being racial. He made this explicit when he wrote that “two people of different ‘race’ could have a relation that was not racial.” Cox stated that in Brazil “colored-and-white amalgamation is far advanced,” implying that this was because it had no white ruling class. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 660 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

How striking it is that this liberal still proposes to ‘extinguish’ his Indians in part by ‘declaring them free of tribute’ and ‘giving them private property in land’, rather than exterminating them by gun and microbe as his heirs in Brazil, Argentina, and the United States began to do soon afterwards. Note also, alongside the condescending cruelty, a cosmic optimism: the Indian is ultimately redeemable – by impregnation with white, ‘civilized’ semen, and the acquisition of private property, like everyone else. (How different Fermín’s attitude is from the later European imperialist’s preference for ‘genuine’ Malays, Gurkhas, and Hausas over ‘half-breeds,’ ‘semi-educated natives,’ ‘wogs’, and the like.) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 63 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Racial prejudice emerged only with European colonization and capitalism — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 660; Racialism pervaded Western consciousness before and beyond capitalism; Capitalism differentiated peoples into racial categories rather than homogenizing them — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 205 (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• Racial prejudice emerged only with European colonization and capitalism #corroborates (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 660
• Colonial liberal assimilation differed fundamentally from later racialized exclusion #complicates (0.72) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 63