Further Defense of the Racialization Concept

Abstract

In my article, Racialization: A Defense of the Concept, I argue that ‘race’ fails as an analytic category and that we should think in terms of ‘racialization’ and ‘racialized groups’ instead. I define these concepts and defend them against a range of criticisms. In Rethinking Racialization: The Analytical Limits of Racialization, Deniz Uyan critiques my “theory of racialization”. However, I do not defend a theory of racialization; I defend the concept of racialization. I argue that racialization is a useful idea, but I do not advance a theory to explain or predict the phenomena it describes. While Uyan’s critique therefore misses its mark, it raises important questions about the explanatory scope of the racialization concept. Ironically, I may be even more skeptical of the prospects of any general theory of racialization than Uyan. I argue that while we ought to develop theories to explain particular instances of racialization, we should not develop a general theory of racialization, because it is simply too varied in its agents and their intents, the mechanisms through which it operates, and the outcomes it produces. While hope for any general theory of racialisation should be abandoned, I argue that the racialisation concept is still extremely useful. It offers a necessary alternative to race realist concepts, allowing us to point to the wide-ranging effects of belief in race without falsely implying that race itself is real. Uyan does not focus on my arguments against racial realism. However, the theoretical failures and normative risks of racial realism motivate my defense of the racialization concept. In this paper, I reiterate my arguments against racial realism and offer further defense of the concepts of ‘racialization’ and ‘racialized group’.

Reductionist methodology and the ambiguity of the categories of race and ethnicity in biomedical research: an exploratory study of recent evidence

“…The process of racialisation in this approach is influenced by factors at various levels-biological, social, etc. (Hochman 2019(Hochman , 2021b. However, among the texts analysed, we have hardly found any that would share the latter position.…”

Advances and pitfalls in measuring transportation equity

“…Referring instead to "specific racialized groups" highlights that race categories are social constructions while calling attention to the processes of exclusion and discrimination that dominant groups use to maintain power. For further discussion, see Hochman (2019) and Hochman (2021). and assess transportation equity so that our results comport with lived experiences is rarely asked explicitly, with notable exceptions (e.g., Carleton and Porter, 2018;Humberto, 2023;Lucas et al, 2019; van Wee and Mouter, 2021).…”

Racialization as a Strategic Orientation: Arab Organizations and the Construction of Ethnic Identity in the Cold War Era

“…Undoubtedly both sets of explanations—demographic and orientation shifts of newcomers, and increased U.S. state harassment—illuminate the broader context and important mechanisms that have contributed to the revitalization of ethnic identification of Arab immigrants during the civil rights era, and into the present day. Yet it is also the case that both the operationalization of theories of racialization and the conceptualization of the theory itself have merited prolonged critique and debate (Barot and Bird 2001; Hochman 2021; Murji and Solomos 2005; Rattansi 2005; Uyan 2021). Some have argued, for example, that racialization is often conflated as both a descriptive concept and an analytic theory—a conflation that is liable to halt the productivity of the concept’s social scientific application (Rattansi 2005; Uyan 2021).…”