Race was once understood as a fixed natural essence, not a social construct.

Evidence

Before roughly World War II, before the rise of nazism, before the end of the great European empires, and particularly before the decolonization of Africa, before the urbanization of the U.S black population and the rise of the modern civil rights movement, race was still largely seen in Europe and North America (and elsewhere as well) as an essence, a natural phenomenon, whose meaning was fixed, as constant as a southern star. — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 1671

Categorization

• DEFINE: Pinpoints the historical shift in race’s definition from natural essence to social construction, tied to mid-20th-century political events.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s knowledge of constructivist race theory and civil-rights era historiography. — connects to: Race is a social reduction to sheer force, not a natural trait — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 124; Nineteenth-century race was a loose cultural term, not a fixed category. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 69; The term race relations originated in 1911 assuming races were natural group designations. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 653

Related

• Race is a modern concept barely existing before the Enlightenment (similarity 0.87)
• Race is a modern concept tied to early global capitalism and colonial conquest. (similarity 0.86)
• Race is a contemporary, evolving formation rather than a premodern leftover (similarity 0.86)
• Race is a modern construct disguised as ancient, not a premodern condition (similarity 0.85)
• Race is a social reduction to sheer force, not a natural trait (similarity 0.85)
• Ancient notions of race as biology do not match reality (similarity 0.85)
• Nineteenth-century race was a loose cultural term, not a fixed category. (similarity 0.85)
• Race is a distinctly modern construct central to globalization (similarity 0.84)
• The term race relations originated in 1911 assuming races were natural group designations. (similarity 0.84)
• Race and ethnicity are socially constructed rather than natural categories. (similarity 0.84)
• Race as a configuration dates only from the late eighteenth century (similarity 0.83)
• Race and ethnicity were synonymous before World War II (similarity 0.82)
• Race functions as an organizing glue binding national unity to racial division (similarity 0.82)
• Race is social construction with real material consequences, not biology (similarity 0.82)
• Race functioned as an organizing principle tying bodies to social statuses (similarity 0.82)