Abstract
According to Rousseau, there are ‘two sorts of inequality': one is ‘natural or physical'; the other is between social groups. In order to understand an historical specificity of the concept of race, we will study how the second type of inequality was reduced to the first. In other words, we are going to see how what were considered social inequalities started to be seen as natural inequalities. The concept of race is very complex. Most of the time, in today's world, it describes populations or groups of people distinguished by different sets of characteristics, and beliefs about common ancestry. These human racial characteristics are most widely based on visible traits like skin color or facial features, and self-identification. Whereas racism was first a belief in the inferiority of the lower orders at home, it became a belief in the inferiority of non-European peoples. We will see how racism evolved progressively, ceasing to be an elite ideology and becoming part of popular culture, establishing itself as a mass ideology and transforming the concept of race into an issue of colour dividing the world. In this paper, in order to explain the historical specificity and contemporary relevance of the concept of race, we will explain the making of a discourse of race from the eighteenth century to the age of democracy, having eventually a look at the contradictions of equality that emerged in modern society.
