Liberal racial historicism held in cities while naturalist racism dominated frontiers

Evidence

By mid-century, claims to native historical immaturity and Euroinspired progressivism that constituted the content of racial historicism were infusing Anglo-colonial administrations from Calcutta to Cape Town. The emergence and impact of assertive racial theories of natural difference, by contrast, took their toll more readily outside of Cape Town’s provincialized urbanity. In the city, the seat of colonial government, the contre-histoire of Anglo-infused racial historicism identified above all with John Stuart Mill’s liberalism came to have some traction. Its influence, however, waned the further one traveled from the local metropole, itself a site of more or less robust mixture, as I have been arguing. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1414

Categorization

• XREF: Urban contact and mixture correlating with more liberal race ideology versus frontier locations breeding exclusion directly bears the reader’s contact/institution gap question — a geographic, not just racial, axis. — connects to: Racial historicism held sway in colonial cities while naturalism dominated the frontier — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1414; Historicist racial thought fueled abolition while naturalism underpinned slavery — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 108; Frontier racial hardening followed the waning of metropolitan civilizing norms — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1368 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Racial historicism held sway in colonial cities while naturalism dominated the frontier #corroborates (1.00) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1414
• Historicist racial thought fueled abolition while naturalism underpinned slavery #expands (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 108
• Frontier racial hardening followed the waning of metropolitan civilizing norms #qualifies (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1368