Eighteenth century ethnology secularized racism into a scientific ideology justifying conquest.

Evidence

Cotton Mather’s missionary counterpart in Virginia, James Blair, died sixteen days after Thomas’s birth, marking the end of an era when theologians almost completely dominated the racial discourse in America. The year also marked the birth of a new intellectual era. “Enlightened” thinkers started secularizing and expanding the racist discourse throughout the colonies, tutoring future antislavery, anti-abolitionist, and anti-royal revolutionaries in Thomas Jefferson’s generation. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 197 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Racialization of religion not only reinforces the privileging of Protestantism (later expanded to Judeo-Christian) in American society but also bolsters White dominance. Over time, religious justifications have been conflated with purported scientific theories of race to justify conquest and subordination of those deemed inferior. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 179 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Religious justifications merged with scientific racism to justify conquest. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 179; Eighteenth-century naturalists laid groundwork for scientific racism as ideology justifying slavery; Modern scientific racism displaced religion from the race concept. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in…, 156 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Eighteenth-century naturalists laid groundwork for scientific racism as ideology justifying slavery #corroborates (0.88)
• Religious justifications merged with scientific racism to justify conquest. #corroborates (0.85) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 179
• The Enlightenment secularized and expanded racist discourse in the American colonies. #corroborates (0.85) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 197
• Modern scientific racism emerged out of Enlightenment taxonomy of human subspecies #corroborates (0.85)
• Scientific racism emerged to justify slavery once religious justifications failed #qualifies (0.78) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1041
• Enlightenment race science was contradictory, not uniformly racist #complicates (0.78)
• Modern scientific racism displaced religion from the race concept. #qualifies (0.75) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 156
• Eighteenth-century ethnology fused bodily and cultural notions of race together #expands (0.75) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 137
• Placing humans in the animal kingdom enabled scientific racism justifying slavery and conquest. #expands (0.75)
• Enlightenment bred racism because wrongs now need ideological justification #expands (0.72)
• The racialization of Muslims was anchored in Enlightenment-era colonial ideologies #exemplifies (0.70) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 185