Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T04:48:23.365Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

FURTHER DEFENSE OF THE RACIALIZATION CONCEPT

A Reply to Uyan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2021

Adam Hochman
Adam Hochman*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
*
Corresponding author: Adam Hochman, Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University, N.S.W., 2109, Australia. E-Mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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’.

Keywords

RacializationRacialized GroupsRacismRaceRacial Formation
Type
State of the Discourse
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , Spring 2021 , pp. 31 - 48
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hutchins Center for African and African American Research

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Angermeyer, Matthias C., and Matschinger, Herbert (2004). The Stereotype of Schizophrenia and Its Impact on Discrimination Against People with Schizophrenia: Results From a Representative Survey in Germany. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 30(4): 1049–1061.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Angermeyer, Matthias C., and Matschinger, Herbert (2005). Causal Beliefs and Attitudes to People with Schizophrenia: Trend Analysis Based on Data from Two Population Surveys in Germany. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 186(4): 331–334.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barot, Rohit, and Bird, John (2001). Racialization: The Genealogy and Critique of a Concept. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 24(4): 601–618.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blum, Lawrence (2002). “ I’m Not a Racist, but…”: The Moral Quandary of Race. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Blum, Lawrence (2010). Racialized Groups: The Sociohistorical Consensus. The Monist, 93(2): 298–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bobo, Lawrence D. (2011). Racialization, Assimilation, and the Mexican American Experience: Racialization in Ascendance. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 8(2): 497–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Tony N., Akiyama, Mark K., White, Ismail K., Jayaratne, Toby Epstein, and Anderson, Elizabeth S. (2009). Differentiating Contemporary Racial Prejudice from Old-Fashioned Racial Prejudice. Race and Social Problems, 1: 97–110.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brubaker, Rogers (2002). Ethnicity without Groups. European Journal of Sociology, 43(2): 163–189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlson, Bronwyn (2016). The Politics of Identity: Who Counts as Aboriginal Today? Canberra, Australia: Aboriginal Studies Press.Google Scholar
Casey, Patrick Michael (2021). The Racialization of American Muslim Converts by the Presence of Religious Markers. Ethnicities, 21(3): 521–537.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chávez-Moreno, Laura C. (2021). The Problem with Latinx as a Racial Construct vis-à-vis Language and Bilingualism. In Murillo, Enrique G. Jr, Bernal, Dolores Delgado, Morales, Socorro, Luis, Urrieta Jr, Bybee, Eric Ruiz, Muñoz, Juan Sánchez, Saenz, Victor B., Villanueva, Daniel, Machado-Casas, Margarita, and Espinoza, Katherine (Eds.), Handbook of Latinos and Education: Theory, Research, and Practice, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong (2012). Race and/as Technology, or How to Do Things to Race. In Nakamura, Lisa and Chow-White, Peter A (Eds.), Race after the Internet, pp. 38–60. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Coleman, Beth (2009). Race as Technology. Camera Obscura, 24(1): 177–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Condit, Celeste M., Parrott, Roxanne L., Harris, Tina M., Lynch, John, and Dubriwny, Tasha (2004). The Role of “Genetics” in Popular Understandings of Race in the United States. Public Understanding of Science, 13(3): 249–272.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Diaz-Leon, Esa (2015). In Defence of Historical Constructivism about Races. Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy, 2(21): 547–562.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donovan, Brian M. (2014). Playing with Fire?: The Impact of the Hidden Curriculum in School Genetics on Essentialist Conceptions of Race. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51(4): 462–496.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fields, Barbara J. (2001). Whiteness, Racism, and Identity. International Labor and Working-Class History, 60: 48–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fields, Karen, and Fields, Barbara J. (2012). Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Garcia, Jorge L. A. (2003). Three Scalarities: Racialization, Racism, and Race. Theory and Research in Education, 1(3): 283–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, David Theo (1992). The Semantics of Race. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 15(4): 543–569.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, David Theo (2005). Racial Americanization. In Murji, Karim and Solomos, John (Eds.), Racialization: Studies in Theory and Practice, pp. 87–102. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gonzalez-Sobrino, Bianca, and Goss, Devon R. (2019). Exploring the Mechanisms of Racialization Beyond the Black–White Binary. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 42(4): 505–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griffiths, Paul, and Hochman, Adam (2015). Developmental Systems Theory. In Kehrer-Sawatzki, H. (Ed.), eLS, pp. 1–7. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Google Scholar
Haider, Maheen (2020). The Racialization of the Muslim Body and Space in Hollywood. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 6(3): 382–395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardimon, Michael O. (2017). Rethinking Race: The Case for Deflationary Realism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haslanger, Sally (2012). Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heng, Geraldine (2018). The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochman, Adam (2013a). Against the New Racial Naturalism. The Journal of Philosophy, 110(6): 331–351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochman, Adam (2013b). Do We Need a Device to Acquire Ethnic Concepts? Philosophy of Science, 80(5): 994–1005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochman, Adam (2013c). Racial Discrimination: How Not to Do It. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 44(3): 278–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochman, Adam (2014). Unnaturalised Racial Naturalism. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 46: 79–87.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hochman, Adam (2016). Race: Deflate or Pop? Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 57: 60–68.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hochman, Adam (2017). Replacing Race: Interactive Constructionism about Racialized Groups. Ergo, 4(3): 61–92.Google Scholar
Hochman, Adam (2019a). Is “Race” Modern?: Disambiguating the Question. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 16(2): 647–665.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochman, Adam (2019b). Race and Reference. Biology & Philosophy, 34(32): 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochman, Adam (2019c). Racialization: A Defense of the Concept. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 42(8): 1245–1262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochman, Adam (2020). Janus-Faced Race: Is Race Biological, Social, or Mythical? American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 175(2), 453–464.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jones, Holly, and Jones, Nicholaos (2017). Race as Technology: From Posthuman Cyborg to Human Industry. Ilha Do Desterro, 70(2): 39–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keita, Shomarka Omar Yahya, Kittles, Rick A., Charmaine, D. M. Royal, Bonney, George E., Furbert-Harris, Paulette, Dunston, Georgia M., and Rotimi, Charles N. (2004). Conceptualizing Human Variation. Nature Genetics, 36(11): S17–S20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lalumera, Elisabetta (2013). On the Explanatory Value of the Concept-Conception Distinction. Rivista Italiana Filosofia Del Linguaggio, 8: 73–81.Google Scholar
Lentin, Alana (2020). Why Race Still Matters. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Loveman, Mara (1999). Is “Race” Essential? American Sociological Review, 64(6): 891–898.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ludwig, David (2019). How Race Travels: Relating Local and Global Ontologies of Race. Philosophical Studies, 176: 2729–2750.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Msimang, Phila (2019). Racializing Races: The Racialized Groups of Interactive Constructionism Do Not Exclude Races. Ergo, 6(1): 1–30.Google Scholar
Msimang, Phila (2020). Medicine, Anti-Realism, and Ideology: Variation in Medical Genetics Does Not Show That Race Is Biologically Real. SATS, 20(2): 117–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murji, Karim, and Solomos, John (2005). Racialization: Studies in Theory and Practice. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nirenberg, David (2009). Was There Race before Modernity?: The Example of “Jewish” Blood in Late Medieval Spain. In Eliav-Feldon, Miriam, Isaac, Benjamin, and Ziegler, Joseph (Eds.), The Origins of Racism in the West, pp. 232–264. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Omi, Michael, and Winant, Howard (2015). Racial Formation in the United States. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Oyama, Susan (2000). Causal Democracy and Causal Contributions in Developmental Systems Theory. Philosophy of Science, 67: 332–347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rattansi, Ali (2005). The Uses of Racialization: The Time-Spaces and Subject-Objects of the Raced Body. In Murji, Karim and Solomos, John (Eds.), Racialization: Studies in Theory and Practice, pp. 271–301. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Selod, Saher, and Embrick, David G. (2013). Racialization and Muslims: Situating the Muslim Experience in Race Scholarship. Sociology Compass, 7(8): 644–655.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Serre, David, and Pääbo, Svante (2004). Evidence for Gradients of Human Genetic Diversity Within and Among Continents. Genome Research, 14: 1679–1685.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shulman, Julie L., and Glasgow, Joshua (2010). Is Race-Thinking Biological or Social, and Does It Matter for Racism?: An Exploratory Study. Journal of Social Philosophy, 41(3): 244–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smedley, Audrey, and Smedley, Brian (2005). Race as Biology Is Fiction, Racism as a Social Problem Is Real. American Psychologist, 60(1): 16–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spencer, Quayshawn (2019). A More Radical Solution to the Race Problem. Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 93(1): 25–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
St Louis, Brett (2002). Post-Race/Post-Politics? Activist-Intellectualism and the Reification of Race. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 25(4): 652–675.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Paul (2013). Race: A Philosophical Introduction. Cambridge, UK: Polity.Google Scholar
Templeton, Alan (2013). Biological Races in Humans. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 44(3): 262–271.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Uyan, Deniz (2021). Rethinking Racialization: The Analytical Limits of Racialization. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 18(1): 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yarbrough, Robert A. (2010). Becoming “Hispanic” in the “New South”: Central American Immigrants’ Racialization Experiences in Atlanta, GA, USA. GeoJournal, 75: 249–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar