Race relations are directly linked to economic processes of conquest and unequal exchange.

Evidence

Unless one attributes to race a single, unitary transhistorical character—such that wherever and whenever it appears it always assumes the same autonomous features, which can be theoretically explained perhaps by some general theory of prejudice in human nature (an essentialist argument of a classic type)—then one must deal with the historical specificity of race in the modern world. Here one is then obliged to agree that race relations are directly linked with economic processes: historically, with the epochs of conquest, colonization, and mercantilist domination, and currently, with the “unequal exchanges” which characterize the economic relations between developed metropolitical and “underdeveloped” satellite economic regions of the world economy. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 585

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the anti-essentialist move: rejecting transhistorical race in favor of historical specificity tied to economic processes.