"The first chapter deals largely with the ideologies of the eighteenth and nineteenth century to show how the adverse racial propaganda of the period had by extension legitimised the low cultural standing of the black person."

At the start of the chapter Manning Nash's "Race and the Ideology of Race" is quoted. Nash identified three areas of confusion which result from the ideology of race and the subordination of culture...

1)the identification of racial differences with cultural and social differences

2)the assumption that cultural achievement is directly , and chiefly, determined by the racial characteristics of a population;

3)the belief that physical characteristics of a population limit and define the sorts of culture and society they are able to to createor participate in.

he argues that " these theories were advanced for the purpose of establishing an ideology of race which had ends other than just racial superiority. The assertion of a white culture through the devaluation of black culture was geared at establishinig an ideology of race which in turn became a basis for all political measures. "

furthermore " building a racial idelogy is not a function of state of knowledge abuot racial differences. It is a response to a situation of social conflict and crisis"

the book illustrates the parallel with the attempt in Nazi Germany to "mark off a socially visible group with supposed racial characteristics ". this shows the case for racial deifferences made between two groups of the sam color. The underlyig idea was to "easily establish the differences between two groups which were culturally and racially dissimilar"

MY TAKE: racism is an outgrowth of western ideology and the color issue is secondar to the culture conflict that instigated the "race idea".