Opposing racial classification can substitute for and crowd out the struggle against racism

Evidence

I shall be suggesting that there are crucial moments when the necessity and complexity of this connection are lost sight of, and antiracism reduces primarily, principally, or completely to antiracial commitment, to antiracialism. At these moments, the end of racism is confused with no more than being against race, the end of race substituting to varying degrees for the commitment to – the struggles for – ending racism. The refusal of racism reduces to racial refusal; and racial refusal is thought to exhaust antiracism. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 50

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the core distinction between antiracialism (being against race as a category) and antiracism (ending racist arrangements and subordination).
• XREF: Links to Goldberg’s broader argument against colorblind/post-racial framings that use the end of ‘race’ to deny ongoing racism. — connects to: the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: How Ourselves, the True, and Every Other Are Built from War”