Race flourished as a political concept even while officials denied it distinguished need

Evidence

The commission justified its license to expend funds, time, and personnel in part by redirecting the vectors of accountability and blame. Race, as one commissioner upheld, was no way to distinguish need in a modern world. But the virulent effects of racialized policy were present and effective. Race thrived as a vital political concept and accrued power in its updated form. It distinguished the cultural coordinates of those with the capacity to participate in the intimate and public practices of European privilege, even as it disenfranchised those who could not claim echte (real), zuivere (pure) full-blooded membership. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 981

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: The race-denied-yet-effective dynamic parallels ‘modern racism’ literatures and the colorblind-era critiques.

Related

• Race retained power by distinguishing cultural capacity for European privilege rather than biology (similarity 0.89)
• Race concepts only gained political force when colonial needs adopted them (similarity 0.82)
• Study of the politics of race stayed marginal until the 1980s and 1990s (similarity 0.81)
• Race is a contemporary, evolving formation rather than a premodern leftover (similarity 0.81)
• Race was once understood as a fixed natural essence, not a social construct. (similarity 0.80)
• Race and racism must be distinguished analytically and politically (similarity 0.80)
• Race-and-politics scholarship remains largely descriptive and undertheorized (similarity 0.80)
• Race and ethnicity function as political resources for both dominant and subordinate groups. (similarity 0.80)
• Racelessness forms differ in their founding motives and effects (similarity 0.79)
• Race manifests in plural, complex forms that defy singular accounts within political institutions (similarity 0.79)
• Racial assessments persisted as scholarly truth-claims despite formal legal abolition of race criteria (similarity 0.79)
• Race is a modern construct disguised as ancient, not a premodern condition (similarity 0.79)
• Race is a distinctly modern construct central to globalization (similarity 0.78)