European racialism justified colonial expansion and rule

Evidence

Racialism emerged in the eighteenth century as the dominant expression of European expansion and the transcontinental domination which the racialism justified. Colonial rule after the Berlin Conference was saturated with racialism. Lévy-Brühl, an armchair anthropologist (rather than a philosopher), posits that there is a radical difference between the West and “primitive” peoples. The West, for example, is characterized by a history of intellectual and spiritual reasoning, whereas the life (Weltanschauung) and thinking of “primitives” were viewed as inferior or as having nothing in common with the West (Mudimbe 1988, pp. 135–136). — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 513

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Enlightenment race theory about Muslims required colonial dominance and liberal societies — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 105; Race-as-inferiority toward Arabs and Muslims emerged only with nineteenth-century colonial power — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 142; Denying colonial subjects the rights Europeans fought for required racializing them as essentially fixed (+2 more)