Gerald Bivens

A racial project can be defined as racist if and only if it creates or reproduces structures of domination based on essentialist³² categories of race. Such a definition recognizes the importance of locating racism within a fluid and contested history of racially based social structures and discourses. Thus there can be no timeless and absolute standard for what constitutes racism, for social structures change and discourses are subject to rearticulation. Our definition therefore focuses instead on the "work" essentialism does for domination, and the "need" domination displays to essentialize the subordinated.

³² Essentialism, it will be recalled, is understood as belief in real, true human essences, existing outside or impervious to social and historical context.