Racism operates as a changing process rather than a fixed project

Evidence

In part, this must be because one cannot explain racism in abstraction from other social relations—even if, alternatively, one cannot explain it by reducing it to those relations. It has been said that there are flourishing racisms in pre-capitalist social formations. This only means that, when dealing with more recent social formations, one is required to show how thoroughly racism is reorganized and re-articulated with the relations of new modes of production. Racism within plantation slave societies in the mercantilist phase of world capitalist development has a place and function, means and mechanisms of its specific effectivity, which are only superficially explained by translating it out from these specific historical contexts into totally different ones (Finley 1969; Davis 1969 and 1966). Others have argued that, though slavery in the Ancient World was articulated through derogatory classifications which distinguished between the enslaved and enslaving peoples, it did not necessarily entail the use of specifically racial categories, while plantation slavery almost everywhere did. Thus, there can be no assumed, necessary coincidence between racism and slavery as such. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 633 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

“We recognized that increased voting strength might encourage a shift in the tactics of discrimination,” Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach testified to Congress. “Once significant numbers of blacks could vote, communities could still throw up obstacles to discourage those voters or make it difficult for a black to win elective office.” Katzenbach’s recognition of the fact that racist policies could progress in the face of racial progress proved prophetic. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 989 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

As I have argued throughout, “race” once produced does not endure in the same form across time. While projects of racialization draw from past legacies, as well as coterminous racial regimes, context is central to how racism but also anti-racism operate. I have therefore employed a dialectical materialist mode of analysis that can capture contradiction and change within the totality of empire. The matrix with its many boxes, and the lines and arrows connecting these boxes, depicts the processual nature of racism and the struggle for hegemony. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 751 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The apparent erasure of race and the ongoing racial ordering are one process — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 958; The end of Reconstruction coincided with the dawn of modern racism — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 890; Empire is a contingent process that reproduces itself through shifting racism. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 93 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Racism gets reorganized by each mode of production rather than being constant #corroborates (0.92) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 633
• Racist policy adapts and progresses even as explicit racism recedes #corroborates (0.82) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 989
• Racialization is a changing process where context shapes anti-racism too #corroborates (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 751