Racial thinking and urban sensibility share overlapping binary structures

Evidence

The fundamental premise of racism identifies a distinction between self and various others that are associated with particular characteristics and a casual glance at the attributes of urbanism detailed in table 21.2 cannot fail to notice the resemblance with much “comrnonsense” discussion of racial caricature. The sometimes crude boundaries of bigotry echo the crude binary oppositions of town and countryside, just as the more nuanced valorizations of disgust and desire hide the more complex racisms of the contact zones between different cultures (Pratt, 1992) and the ambivalence of some writers about the possibilities of cultural fusion and hybridity (Bhabha, 1994; Gilroy, 2000). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2279

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s work on how categories of difference (race/class/dress) are constructed — echoes the immodesty-panics piece on class and identity signaling. — connects to: Urban space mediates how diversity and racialization play out differently — Sivamohan Valluvan, Conviviality and Multiculture: A…, 67