Considering the origin of race thinking in the U.S.

Taylor’s analysis of race-thinking offers a noteworthy point concerning how “the idea of US racialism took shape under conditions established by the European colonial project” (19). If we consider that the epistemological framework from which race-thinking emerged came through the European lens, and upon the colonial project this framework was presented to be what is, through systems of education and social development, we might further understand not only how these categories purporting essential difference came to be so deeply engrained within public discourse, but also the political purpose they served for the colonialist. Walter Mignolo makes a similar point of the political measure taken in the development of race-thinking in his book, The Idea of Latin America, stating that “in order for one history to be seen as primary, a system of classification to marginalize certain knowledges, languages, and beings needs to be in place. Thus, colonization and the justification for the appropriation of land and the exploitation of labor in the process of the invention of America required the simultaneous ideological construction of racism” (15). If we are to take Mignolo's and Taylor’s claims concerning the emergence of race-thinking in the US, we might see a possible development of race-thinking as involving the following steps: (1) the setting of criteria concerning race, including that of a human hierarchy with Europe being the point of enunciation (2) the invitation of race-thinking through the colonial project of education (3) the reification of racial categories through application of the learned categories to people (whether this be to oneself or another).