Race naturalizes the magical, constructed character of state power

Evidence

That race is a marker, an expression, indeed, constitutive of modern relations of power makes it especially amenable to the expression of state power, one might say, to the central defining condition of modern statehood per se. Through race there is displaced from the modern state, covered over, the raw expression of state power. Such power, nothing more than created, is projected through racial terms as the given order of things, seemingly intractable and so established by natural or teleological law. The consensual rationalization of modern statehood acquires the anchor of racial naturalization; and the givenness of race, its teleology, becomes legitimated - reinforced - through the veneer of consensual agreement of citizens to the state and state fabrication. Those rendered racially inferior or different are locked in and away. The almost conceptual vacuity of race (Stoler, 1997) enables configuration of transnational extrastate identities - for example, “the white race” or diasporic Pan-Africanism - as well as the reification and magnification of local, intrastate racial exclusions (cf. Balibar, 1990). These two movements do not simply pull away from each other. Rather, the elasticity of race pulls them back as they stretch apart into a taut, mutually reinforcing racial order. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1740 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Racecraft naturalizes hierarchy so the subordinated consent to their own subordination — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 461; Woodrow Wilson grounded self-government in a hierarchy of stronger and nobler races; Race naturalizes state power by disguising its constructed character as sacred and given. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1737 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Race naturalizes the state’s power, making its constructions appear sacred and unchallengeable. #corroborates (0.96)
• Race naturalizes state power by presenting created social order as given and teleological #expands (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1740