Race functions as an invisible borderline mark of formal belonging and permissible speech.

Evidence

Race serves as invisible border line demarcating both who formally belongs or not and what can or cannot be said about it. The border line is inscribed not at the level of personal relation, of social and sexual intercourse or the excitement of avant-garde aesthetic expression, but in the crevices of political divides and formal relations of power, of institutional access and full membership in the polity, of educational standards and citizenship requirements. Nonracialism squeezing out any possibility of antiracism. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 909

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘invisible border line’ concept parallels Franz Fanon’s and Goldberg’s own racial-state work, plus Mbembe on necropolitics. Also connects to my prior reading on how silence about race enables racial harm. — connects to: White privilege consists of unearned daily assets invisible to those who hold them. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1249; A racial state is simultaneously all-encompassing and invisible in its effects — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1658