Essentialist notions of group difference get appropriated by elites to sustain domination.

Evidence

Essentialisms that take for granted received categories and relations of difference - and particularly the practices used in defining and naturalizing them run the risk of being appropriated by states, institutions, elites, and other parties that seek to sustain or extend relations of social inequality and domination. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 291

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to critiques of reified group identity in racial and ethnic studies, and to the standing view that group essentialism underpins genocide justifications. — connects to: Domination consigns all who differ merely by virtue of difference to the enemy camp; Ethnopopulism frames elites as colluding with ethnic others to justify hardline measures. — Erin K. Jenne and Promise Frank Ejiofor, Ethnopopulism and genocidal…, 41; Elites moralize contentment to those they exploit. (+3 more)