Re-Thinking Racialization

Abstract

This paper seeks to scrutinize the most recent definition of racialization, as proposed by Adam Hochman, and interrogate its utility as a productive analytic for social scientists. Due to theoretical conflations between race and racism, and analytical conflations of groupness and category, racialization functions as a tautological descriptive rather than an agenda-setting theoretical framework for scholars studying race. The most recent definition of the concept cannot, and does not try to, account for a mechanism for the process of racialization. Such an accounting is a necessary component of any conceptualization that aims to help identify the origins of racialization. Second, in the absence of locating an agent or mechanism, the concept is tautologized: racialization, with an inability to locate a mechanism, offers itself up as the mechanism. Third, this tautologizing leads to a profound conflation of racialization offered as both a descriptive and a causal concept. Not only does this conflation halt the analytic capacity of the term as it applies to social scientific uses, but this conflation proves harmful for the anti-realist agenda as proposed by Hochman. By conflating analyses of causality with description, the latest definition of racialization unknowingly countersigns a uniquely American ideological conception of race; that is, the latest definition allows a description of the appearance of race to stand in for an explanation for race.

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).…”

“…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). While much of the current literature on Arab racialization has descriptively documented the occurrence of events of harassment and stereotyping, it has also somewhat presumed this descriptive accuracy to reaffirm the existence of racialization.…”

“…Racialization, as it may be used by scholars of race and ethnicity, should be reconceptualized as an empirical and historical phenomenon rather than an amorphic causal or descriptive concept. As has been argued, the term’s most common use in contemporary sociological literature—and especially as it is applied to recently formed or forming ethnic and racial groups—is liable to teleology: Racialization has often been deployed as a concept that is not only causative of racial identification, but also said to be caused by racial identification (Uyan 2021). A reorientation, as described above, shifts the object of analysis to the historical processes, agents, and organizations that produce race and ethnic identity, rather than affirming outcomes already formed.…”

Facecraft: Race Reification in Psychological Research With Faces

“…Rather than taking race(s) for granted as a pre-determined entity that exists biologically or socially, the racecraft by which race becomes treated as such by psychologists needs to be identified and addressed. The costs of failing to do so are great: it can contribute to psychology's history of 4 It should be noted that the definition and value of "racialization" for theory and practical action has been highly contested and defended for various reasons (Hochman, 2019(Hochman, , 2021Uyan, 2021). Two points of contention are useful to consider.…”