European racism has largely shifted from scientific to cultural grounds of legitimacy

Evidence

In Europe there is really little left of the old scientific racism with its appeals to science as a basis for its arguments and practices; nowadays racism is much more likely to seek legitimacy in the cultural sphere. In different ways, which vary considerably from one country to another, racism is the outcome of the destructuring of social forms which are dying, of the old recipes for the integration of a structural conflict into the institutional and cultural framework of the nation-state, and the emergence of social forms which are seeking to establish themselves, in which the theme of cultural recognition plays a central role. In other words, it tends to gain momentum when the institutions and the political system are incapable of dealing democratically with social and economic difficulties, which means that racism involves a whole set of forms of behavior associated with the crisis of the old systems; it also gains ground in circumstances where cultural identities thrive but do not learn to live together and to communicate. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3180

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the shift from biological to cultural racism described in other race theory sources, e.g. Taguieff and Balibar’s neoracism of cultural difference. — connects to: European multiculturalism backlash revitalized anti-Muslim racism as cultural racism — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 313
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3180