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Critiques
The ideas put forth in La raza cósmica are held to be rather controversial. For example, Celarent notes that many felt that the the work and it's author were exceedingly racist, such as when Vasconcelos' wrote “the Chinese, who under the holy counsel of Confucian morals multiply like rats." (p1000) (p19) However, when it was first written, Vasconcelos' piece was to be a reaction or refutation of Social Darwinism and biological racism although Juárez suggests that Vasconcelos' may have added to Mexican Conservative thought by doing so. (p51)

In order to refute the ideas of racial superiority Vasconcelos conceptualized a fifth race, the cosmic race, something that is an agglomeration of all of the other races. As Palacios notes, this race is called cosmic as it suggests that humanity will become combined and reach its destiny as inferior traits are lost through synthesis and a new Spiritual Era is reached. (p420) Juárez offers a critique to this concept against biological racism by suggesting that Vasconcelos reduced non-white races in order to uphold "Anglo-Saxon propaganda" and "Nordic educational, social and governmental systems." (p70)

Another critique is offered by Palacios on the basis that while Vasconcelos did not support so-called "negative eugenics" or Social Darwinism, he did advocate for a "eugenics of  aesthetics." Palacios describes eugenics of aesthetics as a survival of the beautiful, as compared to Darwin's survival of the fittest. (p422) Palacios suggests that this viewpoint alongside other comments made by Vasconcelos show that he held some races as better than others. (p422)

Contemporary Usage
Contemporarily La raza cósmica has become about mestizaje (racial mixture) and mestizos rather than the creation of the cosmic race. Palacios describes how the Chicano movement transformed the idea of Vasconcelos' fifth race into that of a that of Mexican national thought, focusing on in the words from a poem by Alurista, "a bronze people with a bronze culture." (p428) Palacios also gives the example of Valdez, a Chicano writer, who focused on trying to create a society that was less Eurocentric or Western rather than following along Vasconcelos' idea to evolve the Indigenous and mixed into something better. (p430)

Mestizaje as the contemporary cosmic race is shown in a book The Land of the Cosmic Race by Christina A. Sue. King and Moras give and overview of this piece and state that Mexico has been re-founded on 3 pillars: mestizaje, non-racism, and non-blackness. (p249) (p956)Mestizaje is stated to be the new cultural identity of Mexico, non-racism is applied through this fact as a place can't be racist if everyone is a mestizaje, and non-blackness is the removal of blackness from the culture, as a race category, and from the make-up of mestizos. (249)Both King and Moras note that Sue suggests that the removal of blackness allows the population focus on uplifting their Mexican identity which has more basis in whiteness (249-50) (p457)