Recasting race as ethnicity allows a racial hierarchy to persist unnoticed.

Evidence

The normalization of racialized relations of exploitation has been effected through the superimposition of ethnicity upon racial constructs of difference. By functioning as an ethnicized construct, creolite renders invisible the racial basis of power in colonial and postcolonial society. As a construct devoid of racial (as opposed to color) referents, it has allowed upward mobility to those who would otherwise be located lower down in the racial hierarchy. The acquisition of the cultural capital of European knowledge locates the “dark skinned” in the upper reaches of power, privilege, and authority. This hides the fundamentally racial character of Creole discourse of difference. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3199

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the analytic distinction between ‘race’ and ‘color’ referents in Creole discourse.
• SEED: Angle for an essay: how ‘ethnicity’ talk functions as racial euphemism in postcolonial nationalisms beyond the Caribbean.
• XREF: connects to: Race quietly continues to structure membership even where racial talk is silenced. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 290; The apparent erasure of race and the ongoing racial ordering are one process — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 958; A racial state is simultaneously all-encompassing and invisible in its effects — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1658 (+1 more)