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Abstract
Race as a social category did not exist with all its ramifications before colonization. In the early days, European immigrants were not deemed as a separate race. There were differentiations based on religion- Christian and heathen,- material culture -civilized and barbarian- and of course language and nationalities. Colonization enabled labeling of natives as Red Indians and African Americans as Black people and at the other end, it integrated all European settlers as the Whites. Even in the early days, different coloured Asian people, Chinese, Japanese and the Filipinos, remained outside the main spectrum of European settlers. During the conquests, despite witnessing the advanced Aztec culture which had urban culture and a social hierarchy, practice of human sacrifice and unsubstantiated charges cannibalism were used to denigrate the natives. Converting to Christianity was identified as the vehicle to upgrade them to equivalent human beings.