Racial identity requires shared history and community, not just culture or phenotype.

Evidence

Underlying racialism, not unlike nationalism, is an abstract presumption of familialism. As Nadia Abu El-Haj remarks in her revealing interrogation of genealogy in the wake of the human genome project, membership criteria “in family, nation and political society are always entangled.” The traits or characteristics I take myself to share with those I consider like me conjure an abstract familial connectivity. That I am like them, or they like me, must mean that we are familially connected, so to speak. But familiality, by extension, is necessarily conceived, if often silently, by the negation of (racial) otherness, of the differentiated and disconnected, the unlikened and unrelated. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 68 (#expands, via linked claim)

If we accept that races are not biological but social, then they can be nothing but amalgams of different identities and practices including practices of gender and sexuality, geography, ethnicity, and linguistic identity, as well as the social recognition by other members of the race. Even if we often use proxies for race such as phenotype, color, class, or cultural markers, these can be deceptive. Rachel Dolezal, after all, was able to pass for Black with surprising ease even though she was once a white child. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 89 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Racial identity rests on an abstract presumption of familial connectedness. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 68; Ethnic communities are physically distinguishable and bonded by shared customs and history; Race operates to tie culture, body, and behavior together (+4 more)

Related

• Racial identity rests on an abstract presumption of familial connectedness. (similarity 0.90)
• In-group familial identity is built on negating the racial other (similarity 0.87)
• If race is social, race is an amalgam of practices, not proxies like phenotype (similarity 0.87)
• Race proxies like phenotype can be out-performed with enough practiced identification (similarity 0.83)
• Race and ethnicity function as forms of collective social identity (similarity 0.83)
• Visible phenotype is not required for a group to become racialized (similarity 0.83)
• Racial identity is a dynamic bricolage, not a fixed biological given. (similarity 0.82)
• Race fixes status by ancestry while ethnicity permits negotiated identity (similarity 0.81)
• Race has no scientific basis and is a social myth dating to UNESCO 1950. (similarity 0.80)
• A single person’s racial classification shifts across national contexts (similarity 0.80)
• Race’s specificity is positional rather than essential yet remains real (similarity 0.80)
• Claiming a new racial identity unravels when ancestry is revealed, except through passing. (similarity 0.80)
• Racial identity forms in settings and social exchanges, not just within individuals. (similarity 0.80)
• White-partnered multiracials identify with their minority parent unless phenotype mismatches (similarity 0.79)
• Race is a medium that transforms contingent attributes into supposed essences (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Racial identity rests on an abstract presumption of familial connectedness. #expands (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 68
• If race is social, race is an amalgam of practices, not proxies like phenotype #corroborates (0.80) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 89
• Race operates to tie culture, body, and behavior together #qualifies (0.75)
• Ethnic communities are physically distinguishable and bonded by shared customs and history #exemplifies (0.72)
• Racial identity functions as practice and intention, not just appearance #corroborates (0.72)