Australian anti-discrimination law treats race as a social construct shaped partly by others’ perceptions.

Evidence

In the 2011 vilification case Jones and Harbour Radio Pty Ltd v Trad (No 2) (EOD), the Appeal Panel of the Administrative Decisions Tribunal devel­ oped a sophisticated notion of race that grappled with the dynamic, ambiguous, and fluid nature of race and emphasized the role of percep­ tions and actions by others for how a group comes to be seen as a racial group. Moreover, the Tribunal also explicitly embraced the notion of race as a social construction. The Tribunal stated that the category of ‘ethnoreligious origin’, which it considered ‘an extension of the “problematic” concept of race’, does not refer to an ‘unchanging entity’ but to ‘a social construct or a set of social constructs that is to some degree changeable, chiefly depending on the attitudes of others, including vilifiers, to those enduring aspects of the group that can fairly be said to be related to its religion’. — Mareike Riedel, Islamophobia, Racial Discrimination…, 51

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Omi & Winant’s racial formation theory on race as socially constructed. — connects to: Anti-racist law itself perpetuates the race vocabulary it seeks to abolish. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 679; Race is a product of racism, so groups are racialized rather than racial. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 107; Anti-Muslim prejudice functions as racialized discrimination tied to physical appearance. — Goleen Samari, Islamophobia and Public Health in the…, 34 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Race is a product of racism, so groups are racialized rather than racial. #expands (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 107
• Race and ethnicity are socially constructed rather than natural categories. #corroborates (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 104
• Anti-discrimination law requires groups to self-identify as racialized before they gain protection #exemplifies (0.82) — Mareike Riedel, Islamophobia, Racial Discrimination…, 66
• Anti-Muslim prejudice functions as racialized discrimination tied to physical appearance. #exemplifies (0.80) — Goleen Samari, Islamophobia and Public Health in the…, 34
• Racism generates race through repeated practice, not difference perception. #qualifies (0.80)
• Anti-racist law itself perpetuates the race vocabulary it seeks to abolish. #complicates (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 679
• Legal reinforcement of racial distinctions worsens their harmful effects #qualifies (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 4385