Racism should be analyzed as historically specific, not as a universal human structure.

Evidence

In this, it is the relative autonomy that Gramsci grants to political and cultural factors—with a determining effectivity of their own, in the war of position conducted around the state and civil society—that is critical. This is what allows him to link explicitly political issues of ideology to the question of the lived forms of popular culture. In doing so, he recognizes the contradictory nature of consciousness and of common sense itself. The recognition of this degree of discursive fluidity and provisionality then allows Stuart to make the analogy between the inadequacy of any conception of a pregiven, class-conscious, unified proletarian revolutionary subject and, similarly, any model of a predetermined antiracist black consciousness. In the end, he argues, what we can derive from a Gramscian perspective is a concrete analysis not of racism in general but of specific historical racisms, as they are constituted in particular sociocultural circumstances. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 68

Categorization

• XREF: Analogy between unified proletarian subject and predetermined black consciousness directly parallels the reader’s concern with how Islamophobia analysis cannot assume a pregiven Muslim subject. — connects to: Calling Hobbes a racist need not be anachronistic. — , Stephanie B. Martens - Civilization and…, 17
• DEFINE: Defines ‘specific historical racisms’ versus racism in general — the analytical unit carried into the field.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 68