British colonial rule converted heterogeneous Ottoman communities into segregated ethnoracial polities

Evidence

British modernization, as Salim Tamari has pointed out, accordingly transformed a complexly secular, cosmopolitan, broadly communitarian order under Ottoman rule – especially in cities such as Jerusalem and ports such as Jaffa and Haifa (but also more regionally in Beirut and Damascus) – into a more segregating, ethnoracially and religiously discrete and divided set of communities in contest with each other for resources, space, and political favor. Classic colonial divide and rule, ethnoracially fueled. This regional transformation of heterogeneity into the logos of an assertedly homogeneous ethnoracial polity, of ethnoraciality, its promptings and its implications, is what I trace here in the name of racial palestinianization. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 556

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the coined term ‘racial palestinianization’ — the transformation of heterogeneity into homogeneous ethnoracial polity under colonial divide-and-rule.
• SEED: Angle for an essay: the British Mandate as a case study in how colonial administration itself manufactures the very ethnic categories it then claims to be managing.
• XREF: connects to: British colonial rule created ethnoracial divisions where pluralistic communal life existed. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 556