Immanuel Kant on Race Mixing: The Gypsies, the Black Portuguese, and the Jews on St. Thomas.

What is too often lacking in contemporary interpretations of Immanuel Kant's racial thinking is a more thorough overview of the context and of the literature that he used to support his ideas. This article is mainly limited to Kant's brief discussion on race mixing at the end of this 1785 essay. He presented there the cases of the gypsies, the black Portuguese, and the Jews on St.

Skin color and phlogiston Immanuel Kant's racism in context.

Although much attention has already been paid to Kant's ideas on race, more research is needed to determine the sources that he used to support his portrayal of non-white races. A comprehension of the intellectual context gives us the opportunity to see the way in which Kant wished to contribute to discussions on inheritable human characteristics and the inferiority of certain races. This article will emphasize the relevance of the views of Joseph Priestley and Alexander Wilson for Kant's hypothesis on the relation between phlogiston and the black race.