Vasconcelos continues to say that the people of the Iberian regions of the Americas (that is to say, the parts of the continent colonised by Portugal and Spain) have the territorial, racial, and spiritual factors necessary to initiate the "universal era of humanity".

[1][2][3] For example, Celarent notes that many felt that the work and its author were exceedingly racist, such as when Vasconcelos' wrote “the Chinese, who under the holy counsel of Confucian morals multiply like rats.

[3](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.

[3](p422) The title La raza cósmica embodies the notion that traditional, exclusive concepts of so-called "race" and nationality can be transcended in the name of humanity's common destiny.

Vasconcelos also alluded to the term when he coined the National Autonomous University of Mexico's motto: "Por mi raza hablará el espíritu" ('Through my race the spirit will speak').