kant is a universalist, this is true. but universalism, like particularism, has its own internal contradictions. contradictions which show, quite starkly, that (for eg) kant's universalism bears the burden of its opposite. kant is after all one of the most rigorous thinkers of antinomies such as these, and, given that he generally sees them as resolvable at the level of thinking, he cannot resolve them at all.
so, in relation to the charge of racism against kant:
kant does defend the cosmopolitain view. (i would think there are parallels here with versions of multiculturalism, which i won't go into here, but bear some analysis along these lines). but the kantian (and enlightenment) distinctions between reason and emotion, the transcendant and empirical are - for a materialist analysis - but figurations of real (as in historical) distinctions. it is possible to see those 'real distinctions' at work in kant when he comes to elaborating his anthropology, his concept of the 'human race': gender and what makes a people a people are all thought by kant to be expressions of nature, not history, not society. this is already apparent in his formulation: 'human race'. for kant, the very possibility of establishing a universality is founded in nature. and, when it comes to elaborating his version of what is proper thought, and what it therefore (since he is after all an idealist) means to be properly (naturally) human, he elaborates a series of distinctions between emotion and reason, transcendant rules of truth and mere opinion, in which it does not take much work to see the attributions of class, gender, and 'other races' appear as the foundation (or better: object) of such distinctions.
moreover, one could add that the very definition of a human race looks all very inclusive at first glance, but any attempt to practice such a concept becomes immediately mired in the definition of what exactly 'to be human means'. if kant treats this as an expression of nature, and, if he treats this nature as the ground upon which to adjudicate between what is and is not rational, then, whatever is deemed irrational (marxism, for example?) is, by definition, inserted into the camp of the inhuman.
a critique of kant along these lines does not necessarily flip one into the orbit of irrationalism (a la nietzsche), since this of course would be to continue to play out kant's own antinomies as if they are all that is available. rather, it would i hope make certain concepts such as truth, science, objectivity, subjectivity even, open to a materalist analysis which does not readily fall into the trap of lenin in trying so hard to be seen as a philosopher of the stature of the great western thinkers by committing himself as he did to notions like objectivity as if they can mean what they really say, but only better, if only they are given a marxian twist.
regards,
angela