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Jean-Frédéric Schaub’s book, Pour une histoire politique de la race, published in 2015, encourages an important discussion of historical definitions of racism. It proposes expanding the classic points of reference of the English-language literature beyond North American slavery and the “colored question.” Instead, Schaub suggests an alternative starting point for the racial paradigm, with the emergence of antisemitism in sixteenth-century Spain. This article discusses this position, showing its ideological sources and their intellectual and political impacts. This historical debate invites us to focus on Latin American history in order to reconsider the formation and dissemination of the idea of race, and to re-apply it to the history of European colonialism.