Racial discourse is a consequence, not a cause, of colonial thought

Evidence

Nor, I must stress, can racial theories be informative in the explanation of genocide or the general manner in which colonialism conducted its exploitative projects. First, racial and racialized discourse was no different from Orientalism’s cultural depictions and stereotyping, a discursive method of high performativity, normatively installed as a “natural” means to legitimize and render intelligible and palatable the subjugation, and inhumane treatment, of the now human subhuman. Second, racial discourse was as instrumental as the instruments we have already discussed, namely, it was the consequence rather than the effect of a particular structure of thought. In fact, it was itself a product of that thought; and derivatives cannot logically or epistemologically supersede or obviate that of which they are derivatives. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 401

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that racial theories are derivative products of a deeper structure of thought rather than explanatory causes inverts the standard critical-race analysis, reversing causality between discourse and underlying worldview.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in the Deep Listening / soundscape material about lo-fi environments erasing signal-to-noise distinction — this is a similar move of locating the real cause in an underlying structure rather than surface phenomena. — connects to: Colonial use of ‘black’ did not necessarily denote African descent — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 124