The racial state is a template, not a fixed form

Evidence

The racial state, then, is a genus of forms and processes, an analytic generality the specificities of which differ case by case. Colonies of Britain, Belgium, France, Netherlands, or Germany differed in their particularities, as indeed in racial specificity they differed from each other as well as from those of Portugal or Spain. It is because of these overdeterminations - in number and nature, in variation, and in the variety of their interaction - that one could begin to differentiate not only between particular expressions or institutions of racial rule but also their forms. … So “the racial state” as a category offers no more than a template for rule, the contours rather than the content. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1731

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that ‘racial state’ is an analytic generality and template whose content differs case by case, not a uniform category.
• XREF: connects to: State racism operates pragmatically rather than from coherent durable ideology.; Racial identity is a dynamic bricolage, not a fixed biological given.