Segregation is a neutral descriptive term that implies no judgment about causes

Evidence

Segregation is the differential location of two or more groups within distinct categories of a social structure. The positioning of group members in different structural locations may arise from voluntary choices, whereby members of one group freely choose to occupy locations that are different from those of other groups; or it may reflect involuntary forces, whereby systematic barriers are erected to restrict the mobility of one class of people and confine them to particular positions within the structure. Segregation may also reflect a combination of voluntary and involuntary forces. As a social fact, however, the term “segregation” implies no particular judgment about how the configuration came about; only that groups are separated from one another within a well-defined social structure. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2409 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The usage of “racialization” so broadly in the literature is at the very least ambiguous, and may sometimes be vacuous. One cannot always tell, either explicitly or contextually, whether it is being invoked as a merely descriptive term or with deeper normative, critical thrust. Quite often it is put to work simply to suggest race-inflected social situations, those informed or marked by racial characterization. But lurking beneath the descriptive is more often than not an implicit, unexplained, and almost invariably theoretically unmotivated critical rejection of the normative insinuation in the seemingly neutral description of the social arrangements being characterized as racial or in racial terms. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 351 (#complicates, via linked claim)

In short, as legal scholar Charles Lawrence (1980) argues, the problem of segregation was not that black children attended black schools taught by black teachers, it was that segregation reinforced a pervasive discursive and legal system that defined African Americans and their community as inherently inferior. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 1181 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Segregation can perpetuate itself silently with no active racist actor — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 343; Segregation describes separation without implying how it came to be — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2409; Segregation’s core harm was discursive inferiorization, not separation itself — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1181 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Segregation describes separation without implying how it came to be #corroborates (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2409
• The term racialization smuggles in an unargued critical judgment behind neutral description. #complicates (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 351
• Segregation’s core harm was discursive inferiorization, not separation itself #complicates (0.78) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 1181
• Segregation became the assumed natural norm while integration seemed unnatural #complicates (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 447
• Geographic segregation itself compounds and makes visible the indignity of exclusion #complicates (0.74) — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 75
• Segregation functioned as ongoing racial control rather than total separation #complicates (0.72)