Historicist racism grants colonized peoples only potential, not actual, universal agency

Evidence

Both the naturalist and progressivist presuppose a notion of universal subjectivity, a subjectivity closed off by the naturalist to those considered not white while potentially reachable for all in the historicist or progressivist view. The historicist thus claims to recognize, by presuming actually, an abstract, neutered, universal agency in the personhood of the colonized, a potential agency not yet actualized among the differentiations of their social specificity. — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 50

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies precisely how the historicist model differs from the naturalist regarding colonized subjectivity — the ‘potential but not yet actualized’ structure.
• XREF: Echoes the civilizing-mission logic criticized in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and the modern ‘developing world’ discourse.

Related

• Both racist models grant whites agency while denying it to the colonized (similarity 0.86)
• Racial historicism makes racial structures invisible and absolves individuals of responsibility for them (similarity 0.83)
• European historicism made racial difference explain subordination instead of colonial power. (similarity 0.80)
• Racial historicism replaced biological inferiority claims with cultural poverty excuses (similarity 0.80)
• Racial-state assumptions made the colonial project conceivable in the first place (similarity 0.80)
• Historicist racial thought fueled abolition while naturalism underpinned slavery (similarity 0.79)
• The belief in inevitable racial progress is an ideology obscuring racist reality (similarity 0.78)