Enlightenment thinkers excluded non-Europeans from full humanity in explicitly racial terms.

Evidence

However, key Enlightenment figures – Voltaire early on, Hume and Kant most notably as the century progressed, but far from only – were quick to curtail the domain of the human, and in explicitly racial terms. Thinking through race paid no heed to the English Channel. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1396

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to critiques of Enlightenment universalism in postcolonial theory (e.g., Charles Mills’ ‘racial contract’).
• SEED: Angle: the Enlightenment’s universal ‘Rights of Man’ rhetoric versus its own racial exclusions — a direct lineage from Kant to modern ‘humanitarian intervention’ gatekeeping.