Racial identity has multiple dimensions that statutes fail to specify

Evidence

Wendy D. Roth (2010, 1294) distinguishes several dimensions of racial identification, including subjective self-identification (personal race), expressed race (the race someone decides to project to others), observed/social race (the race others assume someone to be), and phenotype or physical appearance. These different dimensions can match or diverge. But which race is meant when a statute says that a person has been discriminated based on (their) race? To personal race or to social race? Or to both? The self-identification requirement appears to insist on a match between personal race and social race. — Mareike Riedel, Islamophobia, Racial Discrimination…, 70

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clean operational definition of the four dimensions (personal, expressed, observed, phenotype) worth holding onto for any later writing on race.
• CANDY: A compact, memorable taxonomy — could be shared as a two-liner with someone working on race/identity.
• XREF: connects to: Both self-identification and actuality requirements shift legal focus from discriminators’ attitudes to victims’ identity — Mareike Riedel, Islamophobia, Racial Discrimination…, 75; The legal self-identification requirement for ethnic groups constitutes self-racialization — Mareike Riedel, Islamophobia, Racial Discrimination…, 57

Related

• The legal self-identification requirement for ethnic groups constitutes self-racialization (similarity 0.86)
• The self-identification requirement entered law via ‘ethnic’, not via race itself (similarity 0.82)
• Black racial identity is externally imposed before it is self-chosen (similarity 0.81)
• Both self-identification and actuality requirements shift legal focus from discriminators’ attitudes to victims’ identity (similarity 0.81)
• Visible phenotype is not required for a group to become racialized (similarity 0.81)
• Racial identification is learned, not observed in skin color. (similarity 0.80)
• Anti-discrimination law requires groups to self-identify as racialized before they gain protection (similarity 0.79)
• Race and ethnicity function as forms of collective social identity (similarity 0.79)
• Race as a legal category is left undefined in statutes. (similarity 0.79)
• Racial discrimination can precede and constitute a group’s own racialized self-understanding (similarity 0.79)
• Law both authorizes identities and is itself vulnerable to transgressive redefinition by subjects. (similarity 0.79)
• Racial ascription can override visual passing and self-identification alike (similarity 0.78)
• Race’s specificity is positional rather than essential yet remains real (similarity 0.78)