The Color of Equality: Race and Common Humanity in Enlightenment Thought

Enlightenment thinkers bequeathed a paradoxical legacy to the modern world: they expanded the purview of equality while simultaneously inventing the modern concept of race. The Color of Equality makes sense of this tension by demonstrating that the same Enlightenment impulse—the naturalization of humanity—underlay both of these trends. "Devin J. Vartija's The Color of Equality is a splendid contribution to Enlightenment studies. Through a careful analysis of three great eighteenth-century encyclopedias, which he sets deftly in the context of the Enlightenment in all its polyphonic diversity, Vartija provides a nuanced and sensitive response to one of the most vexing questions in modern intellectual history. How was it that the intellectual movement that did so much to invent modern notions of equality also saw the origin of theories that would provide the basis for modern racism? Anyone interested in the Enlightenment will find this book consistently illuminating."—David A. Bell, author of Men on Horseback: Charisma and Power in the Age of Revolution