Racism supplied the ideological license for US settler-colonial expansion.

Evidence

Colonial racism was a major element in that conception of ‘Empire’ which attempted to weld dynastic legitimacy and national community. It did so by generalizing a principle of innate, inherited superiority on which its own domestic position was (however shakily) based to the vastness of the overseas possessions, covertly (or not so covertly) conveying the idea that if, say, English lords were naturally superior to other Englishmen, no matter: these other Englishmen were no less superior to the subjected natives. Indeed one is tempted to argue that the existence of late colonial empires even served to shore up domestic aristocratic bastions, since they appeared to confirm on a global, modern stage antique conceptions of power and privilege. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 571 (#expands, via linked claim)

Cotton Mather’s missionary counterpart in Virginia, James Blair, died sixteen days after Thomas’s birth, marking the end of an era when theologians almost completely dominated the racial discourse in America. The year also marked the birth of a new intellectual era. “Enlightened” thinkers started secularizing and expanding the racist discourse throughout the colonies, tutoring future antislavery, anti-abolitionist, and anti-royal revolutionaries in Thomas Jefferson’s generation. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 197 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Enlightenment secularized and expanded racist discourse in the American colonies. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 197; Close proximity to the colonized intensified settlers’ drive for racial distinction — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1370; Colonial racism welded dynastic legitimacy to national community by universalizing inherited superiority (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial racism welded dynastic legitimacy to national community by universalizing inherited superiority #expands (0.85)
• The Enlightenment secularized and expanded racist discourse in the American colonies. #expands (0.80) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 197
• Colonial racism generalized aristocratic superiority to justify empire and shore up domestic class rule #expands (0.80) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 571
• Close proximity to the colonized intensified settlers’ drive for racial distinction #expands (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1370
• US Indian policy constitutes settler colonialism rather than mere discrimination #qualifies (0.78) — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 4