Racial categories matter because racial hierarchies matter: a commentary
- 1 January 1998
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in Ethnic and Racial Studies
- Vol. 21 (5) , 959-968
- https://doi.org/10.1080/014198798329748
Abstract
New racial categories emerge with the progress of history, as new names reinterpret the existence and chronicle the insertion of demographic subgroups into a population. The analysis of categorical change is hardly unimportant work. However, we as researchers would be lax in our analyses if we did not understand that as racial categories change, so do racial hierarchies. To know what a group calls itself is only part of the story. Knowing the cultural, sociological and political meaning of the name, and how the category fits into a racialized - that is to say hierarchical - social structure, is just as important, if not more so.Keywords
This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit:
- Racial ConditionsPublished by University of Minnesota Press ,1994
- Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans.Published by JSTOR ,1991
- Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s, by Michael Omi and Howard WinantPolitical Science Quarterly, 1988