Neither attributing nor denying racism to nineteenth-century colonized elites is anachronism-free

Evidence

Is this level of inquiry into the presence of racism anachronistic, to borrow a term frequently leveled at late-twentieth-century historians of race? Does the very term itself seem too rooted in images of the Ku Klux Klan or the Nazis? Labeling nineteenth-century Egyptians with such a term clouds the discussion and attributes power that simply did not exist; by keeping his discussion of race limited to the idea of racism, Anderson avoids a much more complicated investigation. However, it is just as anachronistic to deny race consciousness in cultures confronting British or French or German imperialism in the late nineteenth century, when political, cultural, and sci- entific definitions of the word race were being coined. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 98

Categorization

• QUESTION: Raises the methodological problem of using ‘racism’ for nineteenth-century Egyptians that the book presumably addresses directly.