Race in racism is an explanatory idea, not an object of scientific study.

Evidence

Ideologies are never interested in the miracle of being. They are historical, concerned with becoming and perishing, with the rise and fall of cultures, even if they try to explain history by some “law of nature.” The word “race” in racism does not signify any genuine curiosity about the human races as a field for scientific exploration, but is the “idea” by which the movement of history is explained as one consistent process. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1062

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows how ‘race’ in racism is a historical-process idea, not a scientific category — the precise move later critics of racialized Islamophobia repeat.
• XREF: Echoes the logic later crystallized in ‘race-thinking’ discourse within this same book’s later chapters, and anticipates Goldberg’s ‘racial state’ analysis. — connects to: Race is a political and social construct, not a scientific category; Racial identification is learned, not observed in skin color.; Blackness is a political-historical construct, not a color or pigmentation. (+4 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1062

Broader Connections

• Race has no biological reality but is a potent social force #corroborates (0.92)
• Race is a political and social construct, not a scientific category #corroborates (0.90)
• Blackness is a political-historical construct, not a color or pigmentation. #corroborates (0.85)
• Racial identification is learned, not observed in skin color. #corroborates (0.82)
• Scientific theories are superstructures explained by history, not causes of it. #corroborates (0.72) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1652