Racism is real but race is only an idea manufactured by racist practice.

Evidence

So categories such as race and ethnicity are best conceived as political resources. They are used by both dominant and subordinate groups for the purposes of legitimizing and furthering their own social identities and interests, claims and powers. In this context it is important to remember that identities based on race and ethnicity are not only imposed, even though they often are, but they also can be formulated and fashioned through resistance. Here racially constituted minorities play a key and active role. It is more accurate as a consequence to speak of a racially fashioned or created (or more commonly, if awkwardly, of a “racialized”) group than of a racial group since race is a product of racism and not vice versa. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 107 (#expands, via linked claim)

It is more accurate as a consequence to speak of a racially fashioned or created (or more commonly, if awkwardly, of a “racialized”) group than of a racial group since race is a product of racism and not vice versa. It is also and relatedly important to note that the now popular if overused notion of “racialization” and its cognates (“racialize,” “racialized”) are ambiguous. They fail in their often facile usage to distinguish descriptive context from normative critique, analysis from dismissal, processes of race-making from critical rejection of racist implications. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 107 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• recurring: this claim recurs 3 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: If race is social, race is an amalgam of practices, not proxies like phenotype — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 89; Europeans already possessed race as a ready concept before enslaving Africans — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 56; Race exists only as a specter produced by racism, not as reality (+15 more)

Broader Connections

• Racism generates race through repeated practice, not difference perception. #corroborates (1.00)
• Race is a product of racism, not its cause. #expands (0.98) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 107
• Racism creates races through practice, and the practice hides itself as its own evidence #expands (0.95) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 322
• Race is a product of racism, so groups are racialized rather than racial. #corroborates (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 107
• Races are produced by racism, not by biology #expands (0.90) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 76
• Racist ideas arise to justify existing oppression, not cause it #expands (0.90) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 530
• Race is the conceptual form through which the practice of racism operates #expands (0.88)
• Racism is defined by its practice, not by intensity or rationalization #corroborates (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 189
• Racist ideas function as propaganda for racial discrimination, not its cause #expands (0.85) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1256
• Racism operates through routine practices, not only individual prejudice or formal institutions #expands (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1473
• Race in racism is an explanatory idea, not an object of scientific study. #expands (0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1062
• Race thinking becomes racism only as a political weapon #expands (0.78)
• Race thinking becomes racism only when annexed to a political project #expands (0.78) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 38