Excerpt from Term Paper:

...... The break with feudalism (and especially with its assumption of demarked, permanent status), both in religious form (the Reformation and the rise of Protestantism) and the secular form culminating in the American, French, Haitian, and Latin American revolutions, was fundamental to the questioning of racism, as of other inhibiting and invidious outlooks. Related to this was the appearance of capitalism. Here a contradictory force appeared. On the one hand, capitalism supported concepts of elitism, "rugged individualism," colonialism, and the "survival of the fittest." It had an insatiable appetite for expansion and rested upon exploitation. In the absence within capitalism of the status-fixed features of feudalism, racism (and male supremacy) provided devices for defining place, thus helping to divide and therefore weaken those forced to labor. All this tended to help initiate, welcome, and intensify racism. On the other hand, necessities of mechanization, technical advance, market expansion, individual capacity, initiative, and motivation might conflict with racist requirements and help question racism itself. capitalism's rejection of feudalism's static and hierarchical features. The various revolutions promulgated ideas--as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, and the Declaration of Human Rights--that served as very significant instruments in

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