| Racial essentialism is the self-aggrandizing but delusory belief that the obsolete, pseudoscientific |
categories that organize the stratification and segregation of the American caste system ‐ |
| “race,” “black,” “white,” “mixed race,” and the like – denote empirically meaningful states of |
affairs, whether genetic, biological, social, or visual; and that in particular, the categories by |
| which some attempt to racialize themselves and others denote actual facts that veridically locate |
each in relation to the others – i.e. put everyone in their place. Racial essentialists attempt to |
| racialize themselves through self-referential announcements of their “racial” identity in terms |
of those outmoded categories. They thereby attempt to racialize their audiences as well, by |
| implication, as either conforming to or diverging from that “racial” identity. These attempts fail |
systematically and by definition, because those categories do not refer to any actual genetic, |
| biological, social, or visual facts at all. But then racial essentialism does not require |
any evidential foundation for its ascriptions. Rather, it reifies those crude racial stereotypes |
| into an unconvincing simulacrum of social reality in an obsessive-compulsive ritual of wishful |
thinking. That is the ritual racial essentialists invite their audiences to reenact. In Passing for White, |
| Passing for Black (1991),
I
cite only a few samples of the vast literature in the biological and social |
sciences and the humanities, dating back more than a century, that conclusively discredits this |
| antiquated relic of 19th century social Darwinism. Those unconvinced by that literature may prefer |
this approach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkwUCUwt3Rs |