Race relations exist only where parties are conscious of racial difference

Evidence

The first writer to give a deeper meaning to the second word in the expression was the Chicago sociologist Robert E. Park, who in 1939 maintained that race relations were not so much the relations that existed between individuals of different races as between individuals conscious of these differences (Park, 1950). He thought that there were no race relations in Brazil because there was nothing in that country corresponding to what a North American recognized as racial consciousness. Park believed that racial prejudice had existed from the earliest periods of history and he described it as a defense-reaction, a defense of privilege. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 659

Categorization

• DEFINE: Park’s consciousness-based definition of race relations, with the counterintuitive implication that racial mixing societies like Brazil have no race relations at all.