Race and racism must be analytically distinguished rather than conflated.

Evidence

The lack of specificity here, the emergent ambiguities, blurs the line and so presupposes an answer to a question not even posed: namely, is racial characterization inevitably racist? All too often the use, if not the very conceptualization, of “racialization” determines an answer in the absence of analysis. I want to insist, by contrast, on distinguishing between race and racisms, conceptually as much as politically – as objects and categories of analysis, as analytics or frames of analysis for different contexts, different if related geopolitical regions, as I put it below. To insist on the distinction even as their deep, complex, often tortured connections need disentangling acknowledgment. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 352 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields argue in Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life that racism produces the myth of race. Racism is real, but race is not. Race is an idea, not a material fact. However, increasingly, even those who challenge racism have come to treat race as a reality whose borders are not only fixed and unchanging but also require policing. Race seems real. But this is an effect of racecraft. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 52 (#complicates, via linked claim)

So categories such as race and ethnicity are best conceived as political resources. They are used by both dominant and subordinate groups for the purposes of legitimizing and furthering their own social identities and interests, claims and powers. In this context it is important to remember that identities based on race and ethnicity are not only imposed, even though they often are, but they also can be formulated and fashioned through resistance. Here racially constituted minorities play a key and active role. It is more accurate as a consequence to speak of a racially fashioned or created (or more commonly, if awkwardly, of a “racialized”) group than of a racial group since race is a product of racism and not vice versa. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 107 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Racialization analysis targets groups marked by race, not prejudice itself. — Nasar Meer, Racialization and Religion: Race,…, 37; Race and racism must be distinguished analytically and politically — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 352; Race and ethnicity are analytically distinct categories, not interchangeable terms — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 725 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Race and racism must be distinguished analytically and politically #corroborates (0.99) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 352
• Race is a product of racism, not its cause. #complicates (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 107
• Racism precedes and produces race, not the reverse #complicates (0.78) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 52
• Race is a product of racism, so groups are racialized rather than racial. #complicates (0.76) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 107