Racism - A Short History - George M Fredrickson.pdf - WNLibrary

TWO The Rise of Modern Racism(s)
from the scattered references to Jews and blacks in the vast
corpus of his writing, one can easily portray Voltaire as the
first thoroughgoing modern racist. His direct contacts with
blacks were extremely limited, if not nonexistent, but he
may have been inclined toward antisemitism by unpleasant
experiences with Jewish bankers. His main animus, however,
was against Christianity, and he attacked Judaism
mainly because of its links to the New Testament and the
religion that it inspired. Rejecting the orthodox biblical account
of human origins, he contended that the human
races were distinct species that had developed separately
and with permanently unequal capacities. His opinion of
the black or African “species” can only be described as extremely
dismissive and derogatory. His reading of the Old
Testament and his observations of the contemporary descendants
of the ancient Hebrews made him thoroughly
unsympathetic, not only to Judaism, but also to Jews. In
fact, he anticipated the secularized racial antisemitism of
the late nineteenth century by implicitly attributing to Jews
a permanent set of undesirable traits. But their defects, in
his view, were the opposite of those that nineteenth-century
antisemites would ascribe to them. For Voltaire Jews,
past or present, symbolized religious fanaticism and intolerance
as opposed to reason. (Romantic nationalists would
later castigate them for their extreme rationalism.) His disbelief
in the promises of the New Testament denied the
power of conversion and gave Jews no role whatever in the
drama of human redemption or progress. 22
On another level, however, his general defense of religious
toleration and civil liberties promised more to Jews
than did the traditional Christian view that they were wit-
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