The racial state is normal, not exceptional, to modernity

Evidence

One of the most telling evasions in these past two decades of thinking about race has concerned the almost complete theoretical silence concerning the state. Not just the way the state is implicated in reproducing more or less local conditions of racist exclusion, but how the modern state has always conceived of itself as racially configured. The modern state, in short, is nothing less than a racial state. It is a state or set of conditions that assumes varied racially conceived characters in different sociospecific milieus. So, in one sense, there is no singular totalized phenomenon we can name the racial state; more precisely, there are racial states and racist states. Yet it is possible at the same time to insist that there are generalizable conditions in virtue of which the modern state is to be conceived as racial, and as racially exclusionary or racist. The history of the modern state and racial definition are intimately related. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1644

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharply distinguishes ‘racial states’ (racially conceived character) from ‘racist states’ (racially exclusionary), a useful precision for vault usage.
• XREF: Directly qualifies Omi & Winant’s racial-state chapter and Goldberg’s wider racial-state thesis; connects to any vault claim treating the state as race-neutral framework. — connects to: Race remains a routine, current shaper of modern state violence — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1843; Race is constitutive of the modern nation-state, not incidental to it. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1651; State character is deeply shaped in racial terms in contemporary states. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 257 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: The author promises to challenge Omi and Winant’s presumed conceptual discreteness between state and race — worth chasing to sharpen the definition further.
• corroborated: 4 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1644