We should never separate race from its ideological and political work. The global practices of European domination, colonization, and conquest in the Americas and Africa in the sixteenth century required ideological justification. Otherwise, such brutal and inhumane practices against indigenous communities would undermine Anglo-Saxon Protestants’ image of themselves as an innocent Christian nation. Drawing from an older, preexisting myth of Anglo-Saxon superiority, white supremacy and racism constructed a white-dominated understanding of the world rooted in racial hierarchy.
