Historically, the modern era is usually defined as the time between 1500 and 1900. In addition to being an age of enlightenment and a time when science and philosophy flourished, it also saw the invention of racism. Most philosophy departments, including mine, have a Modern Philosophy class that covers philosophers such as Hobbes, Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Hume, and Kant. When I was a student, the focus was on the ideas of the philosophers and little, if anything, was said about them as people. For the most part, we’d learn when they died and where they lived. In recent years, there has been more concern about philosophers as people. Whether a philosopher was racist, or sexist is now a matter of concern for professional philosophers, students, and even the public. Addressing this concern requires both a definition of the concept of racism and determining when racism was invented.
While the dictionary provides a simple enough definition of “racism”, the philosophical concept is more complicated. For example, one must distinguish between passive and active racism. Active racism involves acting in ways to perpetuate and spread racism as well as engaging in racist activities. There are various degrees of active racism. A politician who encourages their base to embrace racism and who works to pass racist laws would be engaged in active racism, but so would someone who limited their activities to posting racist memes on social media. Passive racism also comes in degrees. A person might benefit from racism but do nothing significant to support it. Some even claim that failing to actively oppose racism would be a form of passive racism.
One must also sort out individual, systematic institutional and structural racism. As a final example, there is even the matter of distinguishing between sincere racism and opportunistic racism. A sincere racist believes in racism while an opportunistic racist merely uses racism to their advantage without believing in the racism they exploit. Knowing what is in a person’s mind is difficult (see the problem of other minds) and thus distinguishing between a true believer and an opportunist can be difficult. In practical terms, the difference matters very little (if at all). After all, if your business was being robbed, you would not be overly concerned with whether the robbers were true believers in robbery as a way of life or engaged in robbery for purely pragmatic reasons.
As with any good definition, a definition of racism should not be too narrow (exclude things that should be included) or too broad (include things that should be excluded). It should also match our intuitions (although these can differ considerably). As you would expect, there is considerable debate over defining this concept, even among people who are debating in good faith.
One challenge particular to discussing racism during the Modern era is sorting out when the notions of race and racism were invented. While humans have obviously had cultural, regional, religious, and other prejudices since the dawn of humanity, what we today would recognize as a concept of race is a relatively recent creation. Determining when racism was invented is relevant to sorting out whether a philosopher could be a racist in today’s sense of the term. After all, a philosopher could express biases and prejudices that resemble racism, but unless they did so after the invention of racism, then they would not be a racist in the current sense of the term. They could, of course, still be criticized for their prejudices and biases.
Some point to the Systema Naturae (1735) by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus as the first academic use of this term. Linnaeus proposed the existence of four distinct human races. Since academic publications are often behind the times, people were no doubt using this concept well before it appeared in an academic text. What might be the earliest application of “white” as a word referring to race in English law occurred as a response to Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676. In the American colonies, long standing Common Law precedents were overturned to distinguish white population from everyone else. This is also key part of the backstory of white supremacy in the United States.
In the 1500s, terms such as “white”, “race”, and “slave” were used by Europeans, but there is debate about whether these terms indicated racism in the current sense. One must be careful to avoid assigning current meanings to terms that had different meanings in the past. For example, the term “gay” has undergone radical changes in meaning since its origin in the 12th century when it meant “joyful” or “carefree.” If you read a passage about a “gay woman” in the 1600s, this might mean that she is (or was alleged to be) a prostitute. To say a man was gay during that time might be an accusation that they were a womanizer as opposed to noting their homosexuality. As such, if a Modern philosopher said something critical about a “gay man” in the 1600s, they would be criticizing his womanizing and not his sexual orientation.
That said, it is reasonable to believe the conceptual foundations of racism were growing in that time, even if the current language and concepts were not in place. After all, racism did not spring forth fully developed one awful day. While it might seem reasonable to point to the start of the Atlantic slave trade as the beginning of racism, it should be remembered that slavery is an ancient practice. While racism became a key part of the justification of slavery in the modern era, racism and slavery are distinct as a matter of historical fact. To illustrate, Aristotle contended that slavery was both expedient and necessary but did so in a context in which slavery was not based on race. Aristotle can be justly criticized for defending slavery, but it would be anachronistic to accuse him of racism on these grounds. So, it cannot simply be assumed that the current notion of racism was created at the start of the Atlantic Slave Trade. But one can certainly argue that it did.
Based on the above discussion, a European philosopher could certainly be a racist after 1676 and probably even earlier. But, again, we need to be careful when attributing racism to someone based on the words they use; we must consider what the words meant or implied at the time they were used. In the next essay I will at the subject of discerning racism.