Polygenesis segregationist ideas served enslavers’ defense of permanent enslavement

Evidence

With the publication of Essay on Universal History, Voltaire became the first prominent writer in almost a century daring enough to suggest polygenesis. The theory of separately created races was a contrast to the assimilationist idea of monogenesis, that is, of all humans as descendants of a White Adam and Eve. Voltaire emerged as the eighteenth century’s chief arbiter of segregationist thought, promoting the idea that the races were fundamentally separate, that the separation was immutable, and that the inferior Black race had no capability to assimilate, to be normal, or to be civilized and White. The Enlightenment shift to secular thought had thus opened the door to the production of more segregationist ideas. And segregationist ideas of permanent Black inferiority appealed to enslavers, because they bolstered their defense of the permanent enslavement of Black people. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 209

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines polygenesis versus monogenesis as the Enlightenment’s segregationist-assimilationist axis, mapping directly onto Kendi’s three-way scheme.
• XREF: Directly supports Kendi’s central causal inversion: racist policy (slavery) produces racist ideas (polygenesis) to justify it.