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INTRODUCTION
Synchronizing and building upon recent theoretical innovations in the area of race, we lend some conceptual clarification to the nature and dynamics of race and racial domination, providing in a single essay a source through which thinkers--especially those seeking a general (if economical) introduction to the vast field of race studies--can gain basic insight into how race works as well as effective ways to think about racial domination. Unable to locate a single and concise essay that, standing alone, summarizes the foundational ideas of a critical sociology of race and racism, we wrote this article to provide scholars and students with a general orientation or introduction to the study of racial domination. In doing so, we have attempted to lend analytical clarity to the concept of race, as well as to its relationship with ethnicity and nationality. Perhaps more important, along with advancing a clear definition of racial domination, we have identified five fallacies--recurrent in many public debates--that one should avoid when thinking about racism. Although we believe this paper will provide guidance for advanced scholars conducting empirical and theoretical work on race, we have composed it primarily with a broader audience in mind.
WHAT IS RACE?
You do not come into this world African or European or Asian; rather, this world comes into you. As literally hundreds of scientists have argued, you are not born with a race in the same way you are born with fingers, eyes, and hair. Fingers, eyes, and hair are natural creations, whereas race is a social fabrication (Duster 2003; Graves 2001). We define race as a symbolic category, based on phenotype or ancestry and constructed according to specific social and historical contexts, that is misrecognized as a natural category.1 This definition deserves to be unpacked.
Symbolic Category
A symbolic category belongs to the realm of ideas, meaning-making, and language. It is something actively created and recreated by human beings rather than pregiven, needing only to be labeled. Symbolic categories mark differences between grouped people or things. In doing so, they actually bring those people or things into existence (Bourdieu 2003). For example, the term "Native American" is a symbolic category that encompasses all peoples indigenous to the land that...