Racialization

Race
Classification
Genetics
Group differences
Social
Related

Racialization refers to processes of the discursive production of racial identities. It signifies the extension of dehumanizing and racial meanings to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice, or group.[1] Put simply, a group of people is seen as a "race", when it was not before.

Contents

Racialization of religion

An ongoing scholarly debate covers the racialization of religious communities, whereby adherents to Judaism and Islam are informally assigned immutable pseudo-characteristics in the popular imagination of a culture, despite many individual adherents to those religions not visibly sharing in those characteristics; this racialization extends to the descendants of the adherents, even though those descendants may often convert away from active observance of the religion of their forebears but also retain the lingering cultural aspects of the religion for familial and community purposes.

The most immediate effect of the racialization of religion is the internalization of such racialization by the descendants of adherents, whereby the descendants of adherents accept and internalize their religiously-influenced familial culture as an ethnoracial distinction and identity. One of the applications of this racialization is nationalism, whereby the created "race" seeks to assert cultural and national aspirations which are compatible and accommodating to other groups which do not necessarily share in the experience of racialization. Another one of the applications of this racialization is racism and discrimination, whereby those who are racialized are barred from participation in any public or private function of society due to the negative "attributes" of the race assigned to them.

Racialization of Labour

The racialization of labour involves the segregation and appointment of workers based on perceived ethnic differences.[2] It produces a hierarchical arrangement which limits employee agency and mobility based on their race. The process of racialization is reinforced through presupposed, stereotypical qualities which are imposed upon the racialized person by the racializer.[3] It is then normalized by the promotion of ‘colourblindness’ through the use of “soft” language which avoids highlighting ethnic differences.[4]

References

  1. ^ Omi, Michael & Howard Winant (1986). Racial formation in the United States : from the 1960s to the 1980s. Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 0710209703. 
  2. ^ Marta Maria Maldonado, “It is their nature to do menial labour’: the racialization of ‘Latino/a workers’ by agricultural employers,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 32 no. 6 (July 2009), 1026. Link (accessed April 14, 2011).
  3. ^ Marta Maria Maldonado, “Racial Triangulation of Latino/a Workers by Agricultural Employers,” Human Organization, Vol. 65 No. 4, Winter 2006, 360. Link (accessed April 14, 2011).
  4. ^ Maldonado, “Racial Triangulation…,” 360.

See also