The freedom philosophy of Locke excluded non-Europeans from humanity

Evidence

Locke claims that “wild Indians” and “Negroes” have not in fact expended the labor that would give them “the Conveniences” Europeans enjoy (2nd Treatise, #41), not that they are naturally incapable of such rational design and so perennially condemned to such natural state. An American colonist, the Reverend John Bulkley, for instance, invoked Locke to legitimate expropriation of Indian land. He did so on the basis not of “first occupancy” but of the ascendancy of the “God-fearing” and so “morally dignified” productive labor of “the people of New England” over the presumed laziness of the indigenous inhabitants (Huyler 1995: 176). — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 28 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Early rights theory denied humanity to those viewed as lacking rights; Claims about European identity rest on a Lockean theory of property and cultivation. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 811; International law’s sovereign-state frame structurally excluded non-Europeans — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 224 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Locke justified colonial expropriation via labor theory, not natural racial inferiority #complicates (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 28