The US Constitution is an early, large-scale application of Enlightenment ideals that, at the same time, reveals the racially restricted claim to universality. The violent responses of the system underscore the contradictions in the Enlightenment’s claims to universality, which were always limited by race and geography. The examples of writing and the fate of many who made appeals to Enlightenment principles and their contradiction with the unabated imperial violence show the racial boundaries of the universality of those principles. Thus, the Enlightenment’s avowed ideals of rationality, scientific inquiry, and secular governance have not prevailed, as evidenced by the Church’s political survival. Excerpted with permission from The Chromatic World Order: The Fiction That Rules Our World: A Brief History of its Genesis and Other Stories, Sajid Mohamed, Aakar Books.