Race-thinking signals humanity’s end, not its beginning, politically speaking

Evidence

Racism may indeed carry out the doom of the Western world and, for that matter, of the whole of human civilization. When Russians have become Slavs, when Frenchmen have assumed the role of commanders of a force noire, when Englishmen have turned into “white men,” as already for a disastrous spell all Germans became Aryans, then this change will itself signify the end of Western man. For no matter what learned scientists may say, race is, politically speaking, not the beginning of humanity but its end, not the origin of peoples but their decay, not the natural birth of man but his unnatural death. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 429

Categorization

• SEED: The line ‘when Englishmen have turned into white men’ is a potent essay angle on how imperial subjects turn nationality into race.
• DEEPTHINKING: The aphoristic inversion of race as ‘the end of humanity, not its beginning’ is dense enough to sit with — it reframes race from identity to a terminal condition of political decay.