Racial identity is a dynamic bricolage, not a fixed biological given.

Evidence

A guiding theme in much recent scholarship, which is discussed from a variety of perspectives, concerns the claim that race and ethnicity are not natural categories, even though both concepts are often represented as if they were (Stoler, 1995; Smaje, 2000). Their boundaries are not fixed, nor is their membership uncontested. Race and ethnic groups, like nations, are now quite widely considered to be “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1991), socially conceived and considered, manufactured and inflected group formations (Mosse, 1985; Peterson, 1995). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 104 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

We have arrived, Hall argues, at an encounter, the “end of innocence,” and so the end of the innocent notion of the essential black subject. What is at issue here is the recognition of the extraordinary diversity of subject positions, social experiences, and cultural identities which compose the category black. This involves the recognition that black is essentially a politically and culturally constructed category, one that cannot be grounded in a set of fixed transcultural or transcendental racial categories and which therefore has no guarantees. This brings into play the recognition of the immense diversity and differentiation of the historical and cultural experiences of minority communities in societies that throughout modernity have traded on their claim to, and acted to “protect” their projected homogeneity. This inevitably entails a weakening or fading of the notion that race or some composite notion of race around the term “black” will either guarantee the effectiveness of any cultural practice or determine in any final sense its aesthetic value (Hall, 2000). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 128 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Race has no scientific basis and is a social myth dating to UNESCO 1950. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 98; Black identity is politically constructed, not grounded in fixed biological categories. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 128; Race is a shifting disposition, not a fixed category. (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Race and ethnicity are socially constructed rather than natural categories. #corroborates (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 104
• Race is a shifting disposition, not a fixed category. #corroborates (0.92)
• Black identity is politically constructed, not grounded in fixed biological categories. #corroborates (0.90) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 128
• Race is a political and social construct, not a scientific category #corroborates (0.88)
• Racial categories were administratively imposed rather than biologically fixed #exemplifies (0.85) — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 216
• Social practice, not genetics, assigns mixed-ancestry persons to racial categories. #exemplifies (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 675
• Racialization assigns visibly non-white people into a collective identity they may not hold #exemplifies (0.80)
• Race is a social reduction to sheer force, not a natural trait #corroborates (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 124
• Racial identification is learned, not observed in skin color. #exemplifies (0.78)
• The racial state is a template, not a fixed form #qualifies (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1731