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Although the relationship between organizations and structural racism is well established, less is known about how racialization occurs within organizations. Overlooking how racial ideology is imbued in organizational logic obscures the role organizations play in reproducing structural racism. The prevalence of color-blind racial ideology further complicates the study of racialization, as most societies deny the existence of racism targeting people of color. In this article the author asks, How does color-blind racial ideology guide management decisions and the rationalization of racially unequal organizational practices? Using an extended case study method, the author examines sugar-ethanol mills in Brazil, where nonwhite workers are disproportionately exposed to hazardous risks. The author argues that the racialization of organizational practices occurs through a twofold process in which white elites use nonracial discourse to rationalize unequal outcomes and to reproduce the social conditions that steer nonwhite peoples into hazardous worksites. This article makes two contributions to the literature. First, through the discursive frames of cultural racism, naturalization, victimization, and politicized markets, the author shows how the allocation of resources and opportunities at the organizational level shapes and is shaped by racialized social systems. Second, by studying unequal relations in Brazil, the author elucidates the long-standing presence of color blindness in Iberian America while also tracing similarities and differences with color-blind racism in the United States.
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The constraints of racialization: How classification and valuation hinder scientific research on human variation
Abstract Human biological variation has historically been studied through the lens of racialization. Despite a general shift away from the use of overt racial terminologies, the underlying racialized frameworks used to describe and understand human variation still remain. Even in relatively recent anthropological and biomedical work, we can observe clear manifestations of such racial thinking. This paper shows how classification and valuation are two specific processes which facilitate racialization and hinder attempts to move beyond such frameworks. The bias induced by classification distorts descriptions of phenotypic variation in a way that erroneously portrays European populations as more variable than others. Implicit valuation occurs in tandem with classification and produces narratives of superiority/inferiority for certain phenotypic variants without an objective biological basis. The bias of racialization is a persistent impediment stemming from the inheritance of scientific knowledge developed under explicitly racial paradigms. It is also an internalized cognitive distortion cultivated through socialization in a world where racialization is inescapable. Though undeniably challenging, this does not present an insurmountable barrier, and this bias can be mitigated through the critical evaluation of past work, the active inclusion of marginalized perspectives, and the direct confrontation of institutional structures enforcing racialized paradigms.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1847845
- PAR ID:
- 10401682
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- American Journal of Physical Anthropology
- Volume:
- 175
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0002-9483
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 376-386
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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