Historical race relations operate as active structural principles, not residues

Evidence

One needs to know how different racial and ethnic groups were inserted historically, and the relations which have tended to erode and transform, or to preserve these distinctions through time—not simply as residues and traces of previous modes, but as active structuring principles of the present organization of society. Racial categories alone will not provide or explain these. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 636

Categorization

• QUESTION: This frames the whole research agenda Hall is proposing — worth distilling into a set of methodological questions about how to study race and class.
• XREF: connects to: Racial statecraft is normal to modernity, not an aberration — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1703