Hume’s racist footnote was central to and repeated across his essay versions.

Evidence

The question of whether or not views that Hume expressed in a footnote should be taken seriously seems to have been settled by Eze (2000, p.692), whose study of the footnote assures us that “the ideas expressed [in the footnote], were important to the author and significant to the argument of ‘Of National Characters’”. It seems Hume defended the view and repeated it in the other versions of the article. The characterization of Africans that Hume provides, though expressed in an article footnote, cannot be considered, therefore, an afterthought or marginal to his thoughts. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 130

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Racism accounts share a recurrent narrative structure across contexts. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1501
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Racism accounts share a recurrent narrative structure across contexts. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1501