Europe Claimed right to live on labor and property of world's colored peoples

Despite the fact that the nineteenth century saw an uprising in the power of laboring classes and a fight toward economic equality and political democracy, this movement and battle was made fiercer and less successful and lagged far behind the accumulation of wealth, because in popular opinion labor was fundamentally degrading and the just burden of inferior peoples. Luxury and plenty for the few and poverty for the many was looked upon as inevitable in the course of nature. In addition to this, it went without saying that the white people of Europe had a right to live upon the labor and property of the colored peoples of the word. *** In order to establish the righteousness of this point of view ...

In order to establish the righteousness of this point of view, science and religion, government and industry, were wheeled into line. The word “negro” was used for the first time in the world’s history to tie color to race and blackness to slavery and degradation. The white race was pictured as “pure” and superior; the black race as dirty, and inevitably inferior; the yellow race as sharing, in deception and cowardice, much of this color inferiority ; while mixture of race was considered the prime cause of degradation and failure in civilization. Everything great, everything fine, everything really successful in human culture was white.

   In order to prove this, even black people in India and Africa were labeled as “white” if they showed any trace of progress; and on the other hand, any progress by colored people was attributed to some intermixture, ancient  or modern, of white blood or some influence of white civilization.