Blackness is a social location, not actual skin pigmentation

Evidence

Treitler argues African Americans have been situated on the bottom of the racial hierarchy as a result of antiblackness perpetuated by immigrants in an attempt to move to the top of the racial hierarchy, closer to whiteness. Treitler makes it clear that black is a social location rather than referring to actual pigmentation. For example, she shows how Afro-Caribbeans, who are phenotypically similar to African Americans, have been somewhat successful at distancing themselves from African Americans on the racial hierarchy. Their immigrant status protects them from some of the stereotypes that African Americans face. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 460

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes race as a positional category (Treitler/Bonilla-Silva) rather than phenotype — the core analytical move the reader needs for race vs. religion.
• XREF: Returns to how race is structurally positioned, echoing Bonilla-Silva’s tri-racial hierarchy already in the reader’s map. — connects to: Latinidad and Blackness are socially constructed as mutually exclusive — Tatiana I. Zamora and Amado M. Padilla, Making sense of conflicting messages of…, 115; Skin color alone marked chattel slaves regardless of other social position — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1134; Whiteness passes unclassified in nature while blackness is pre-classified as natural — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 529