Interracial interactions are structured by racial categories, not individual identity

Evidence

When police officers in Los Angeles attempted to subdue Mr. Rodney King, or police officers in New York arrested a Haitian immigrant, they were not interacting as individuals. When the senior managers of a large oil corporation mimic the actions of African Americans; or banks lend money to whites but not to blacks; when citizens of Mexico are targeted for specific consideration by the Naturalizaton and Immigration Service, or Asian students are regarded as a model minority, this is not because they are individuals. When some white students fail to gain entry to the University of California at Berkeley, and they notice that some African-American students do gain entry, they are not noticing them as individuals. When American-owned companies relocate to Mexico it’s not because the workers there are individuals. When an African—American woman walks into a Korean store in New York or Los Angeles, neither she nor the store owners interact simply as individuals. When African-American men say they only date white women, or white men say they only date Asian women these are not actions unique to them as individuals. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1823

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the concept of racialized social structure from Omi and Winant’s racial formation theory. — connects to: Contact alone does not enable fluent multi-ethnic interaction. — Sivamohan Valluvan, Conviviality and Multiculture: A…, 17; Racial identity forms in settings and social exchanges, not just within individuals.; Race relations is a false category masking underlying white racism — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 672 (+3 more)