ABSTRACT
It seems particularly curious that eighteenth-century German intellectuals such as Immanuel Kant and others use the Black as a backdrop for the development of their theories on race. Particularly curious for the construction or "staging" of blackness and whiteness is the context of eighteenth-century German Enlightenment, in which these ideas emerge. Long before the transatlantic slave trade, medieval Europeans viewed Africa as exotic and associated the color black with evil, and the devil, while the color white was associated with goodness, light, and God. In the eighteenth century, philosophers and anthropologists fall into two categories: monogenists and polygenists. Monogenists believed that all races originated from Noah and that climate causes physical differences such as skin color, hair, physiognomy, and physique found in races or varieties of humans. Polygenists believed that Africans did not descend from Noah, and therefore were a different species from Europeans, and often used this idea of descent to justify the enslavement of Africans.
