Racial identity rests on an abstract presumption of familial connectedness.

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

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Abu El-Haj’s genealogy work and to the role of family/fictive kinship in nationalism (Anderson’s imagined communities). — connects to: Racial identity requires shared history and community, not just culture or phenotype.; Claiming a new racial identity unravels when ancestry is revealed, except through passing.; In-group familial identity is built on negating the racial other — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 68