Racialism is an enduring principle of European civilization, not a modern invention

Evidence

But this goes far beyond our immediate purposes. What concerns us is that we understand that racialism and its permutations persisted, rooted not in a particular era but in the civilization itself. And though our era might seem a particularly fitting one for depositing the origins of racism, that judgment merely reflects how resistant the idea is to examination and how powerful and natural its specifications have become. Our confusions, however, are not unique. As an enduring principle of European social order, the effects of racialism were bound to appear in the social expression of every strata of every European society no matter the structures upon which they were formed. None was immune. And as we shall observe in the next two chapters, this proved to be true for the rebellious proletariat as well as the radical intelligentsias. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 213

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the book’s central claim that racism predates capitalism and modernity, distinguishing it from accounts locating racism’s origin in the modern era.
• DEEPTHINKING: The counterintuitive core thesis — racism rooted in the civilization itself rather than a particular era — resists dismissal and reorients the whole framework of racial capitalism.