Race is Not Real: What You See is a Power Relationship Made Flesh
Why Read This
What Makes This Article Worth Your Time
Summary
What This Article Is About
Sociologist Gregory Smithsimon argues that race embodies a fundamental paradox: we believe we see it naturally, yet it requires social training to perceive. Through examining historical examples—Thomas Nast’s caricatures of Irish immigrants as subhuman, WWII military pamphlets teaching soldiers to distinguish Chinese from Japanese, Francis Galton’s attempts to identify a “Jewish type”—Smithsimon demonstrates that racial categories Americans once considered self-evident (Irish, German, Jewish as separate races) are now invisible. What we perceive as biological reality is actually racialization: a political process of grouping people to dominate, exploit, and attack them.
Race represents power made visible by assigning it to physical bodies. Whiteness historically expanded to include previously excluded groups (Irish, Italians, Jews) as political conditions shifted, revealing race’s malleability. The Constitution’s division of people into white, Black, and Indian wasn’t descriptive but prescriptive—defining citizenship eligibility, enslavement targets, and genocide victims. Smithsimon challenges predictions that America will become “majority non-white” by 2044, noting that nearly 10 million people changed their racial identification between censuses. Fighting racism requires recognizing race’s instability and attacking the power structures that perpetuate racial categories, not waiting for demographic shifts to organically dissolve racial hierarchies.
Key Points
Main Takeaways
Race as Learned Perception
What seems visually self-evident requires training to see—19th-century Americans easily recognized “Irish” features now invisible to contemporary observers.
Power Made Visible
Race doesn’t reflect biological differences but makes power relationships visible by assigning political categories to physical bodies for domination.
Whiteness Historically Expands
Groups once considered non-white—Irish, Italians, Jews—became white as political conditions changed, proving race’s fundamental instability.
Census Categories Shift
Nearly 10 million Americans changed their racial identification between 2000 and 2010 censuses—race is neither stable nor foreordained.
Political Context Determines Visibility
WWII propaganda taught soldiers to distinguish Chinese from Japanese—distinctions that seemed essential then but arbitrary now.
Demographics Won’t End Racism
Predictions of a “majority non-white” America ignore history—minority-white countries like apartheid South Africa maintained white supremacy through power.
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Article Analysis
Breaking Down the Elements
Main Idea
Race as Shapeshifting Power Structure
Race represents not biological reality but a political process of racialization—assigning people to groups for domination and exploitation. What appears visually self-evident (recognizing someone’s race at a glance) actually requires extensive social training that varies across time and political context. Historical evidence—from Thomas Nast’s Irish caricatures to WWII propaganda distinguishing Chinese from Japanese—demonstrates that racial categories Americans once considered obvious are now invisible, while current categories would be incomprehensible to earlier generations. This instability reveals race’s true nature: power made visible through bodies, maintained by those with authority to categorize and exploit others.
Purpose
Destabilize Natural Appearance of Race
Smithsimon aims to undermine readers’ confidence in race as natural or biological by demonstrating its historical malleability. By showing how Americans once easily identified races (Irish, German, Jewish) now invisible, he challenges the assumption that current racial categories reflect objective reality rather than political power. The purpose is not to deny racism’s real consequences but to reveal that race’s apparent stability conceals constant reshaping—and this recognition creates opportunities to attack racial hierarchies by exposing and challenging the power to categorize rather than accepting demographic inevitability.
Structure
Paradox → Historical Evidence → Contemporary Implications
The essay opens by establishing a double paradox: race is visible but not real, has consequences but can’t truly be seen. It then marshals historical evidence—Nast’s caricatures, personal anecdotes about recognizing Irish and French features, WWII propaganda, census evolution—to demonstrate how racial perception requires training and shifts with political context. After establishing race’s instability through examples, Smithsimon turns to contemporary implications: critiquing “majority non-white by 2044” predictions, examining how whiteness historically expanded, and arguing that fighting racism requires attacking categorization power rather than awaiting demographic change.
Tone
Scholarly Yet Accessible, Provocative
Smithsimon maintains an academic tone grounded in sociological theory (Norbert Elias, Nell Irvin Painter) while using vivid personal anecdotes and accessible metaphors (“storm-borne waves or wind-blown sand dunes”) to clarify abstract concepts. The tone is provocatively matter-of-fact in stating uncomfortable truths—”race is not real,” whiteness expansion “into oblivion”—without inflammatory rhetoric. He employs strategic informality (explaining his typographical choice not to capitalize “white”) to establish rapport while maintaining analytical rigor, creating a tone that’s intellectually serious yet conversational enough to guide readers through challenging conceptual territory.
Key Terms
Vocabulary from the Article
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Tough Words
Challenging Vocabulary
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Evasive, deceitful, or shifty in character; avoiding direct commitment or clear definition through cunning or sneaky behavior.
“But race has always been a weaselly thing.”
A representation that exaggerates or distorts distinctive features to create a grotesque or comic effect, often for satirical purposes.
“Thomas Nast’s caricatures of Irishmen and Blacks are particularly shocking because they are a type we no longer see today.”
Deserving contempt; despicable, worthy of scorn or disdain due to moral baseness or ethical worthlessness.
“Any publication that called itself the ‘Journal of Civilization’ did the contemptible boundary work of determining who was and was not civilised.”
People’s faces or facial expressions, particularly when considered as revealing character, emotion, or identity.
“I knew my face was different from the diverse visages I saw in public.”
Predetermined or decided in advance by fate or divine will; destined to happen inevitably regardless of circumstances.
“A majority-minority society should be seen as a hypothesis, not a foreordained result.”
The state of being impossible to separate, disentangle, or distinguish; so deeply intertwined that extraction is impossible.
“This is not to discount the anxiety about cultural loss but to recognise the inextricability of racial identities and power inequality.”
Reading Comprehension
Test Your Understanding
5 questions covering different RC question types
1According to the article, the inability of contemporary Americans to identify German Americans by appearance proves that all white people genuinely look identical to one another.
2What function does Smithsimon suggest the WWII “How to Spot a Jap” propaganda served, analogous to historical etiquette manuals?
3Which sentence best captures Smithsimon’s core definition of what race fundamentally represents?
4Evaluate these statements about the article’s argument regarding whiteness:
The article argues that whiteness historically expanded to include groups like Irish, Italians, and Jews who were previously considered non-white.
Smithsimon deliberately does not capitalize “white” as a typographical choice reflecting that whiteness rarely constitutes a true cultural identification.
The article suggests that because early US census forms left the race section blank for white people, whiteness was the least powerful racial category.
Select True or False for all three statements, then click “Check Answers”
5Based on Smithsimon’s critique of predictions that America will be “majority non-white by 2044,” what can we infer about his view of demographic change’s relationship to racial justice?
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
The first paradox is familiar to anti-racist educators: we can see race (people perceive racial differences as obvious), but it’s not real (race has no biological basis). The second paradox is stranger: race has real consequences (creating profound inequality and injustice), but we can’t actually see it with the naked eye. What we think we’re seeing when we identify someone’s race isn’t biological truth but rather the result of social training that teaches us which physical features to notice and consider significant. This double paradox reveals race as fundamentally about power relationships rather than natural categories.
Nast’s caricatures of Irish immigrants as subhuman chimps were not merely offensive but believable to his 19th-century audience—people genuinely thought they could identify Irish features that marked racial inferiority. Today, those same features are invisible; few Americans maintain mental templates for what Irish people “should” look like. This historical shift demonstrates that racial perception requires training and changes with political context. Nast wasn’t inventing completely fantastical images but exaggerating features his audience had learned to see as racially significant. The fact that these once-obvious racial markers are now invisible proves race is socially constructed rather than biologically determined.
Following Richard Alba’s analysis, Smithsimon notes that predictions assume static racial categories when nearly 10 million people changed their racial identification between 2000 and 2010 censuses. The census uses “binary thinking” that counts anyone with Hispanic heritage as Hispanic while ignoring their other racial identities. More fundamentally, whiteness has historically expanded to include previously excluded groups when politically expedient—Irish, Italians, Jews all became white as boundaries shifted. The real question isn’t when demographics will eliminate white majority but whether racial justice movements can attack the power to categorize before whiteness boundaries simply expand again to maintain hierarchies despite demographic change.
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This article is rated Advanced level. It requires readers to grasp abstract sociological concepts like racialization and habitus, follow arguments that challenge common-sense understandings of race, synthesize historical examples spanning centuries with theoretical claims, and recognize subtle distinctions between biological reality and social construction. The piece demands comfort with paradoxical statements (race is visible but not real, has consequences but can’t be seen) and ability to understand how the same evidence serves multiple argumentative purposes. The sophisticated interweaving of personal anecdote, historical documentation, and theoretical analysis requires sustained analytical attention across complex conceptual terrain.
Since race is fundamentally about power—putting people into groups for domination and exploitation—the core problem isn’t individual prejudice but the authority to create and enforce racial categories. Those with power determine who counts as white, who gets citizenship, whose neighborhoods receive investment. The Black Lives Matter movement, for example, attacks police prerogative to use violence against African Americans without sanctions—challenging an institution’s power to enforce racial categories through force. Simply changing individual beliefs or waiting for demographic shifts won’t eliminate racism if those with authority maintain the power to redraw racial boundaries, expand whiteness, or create new hierarchies. Justice requires dismantling the power structures that perpetuate categorization.
The Ultimate Reading Course covers 9 RC question types: Multiple Choice, True/False, Multi-Statement T/F, Text Highlight, Fill in the Blanks, Matching, Sequencing, Error Spotting, and Short Answer. This comprehensive coverage prepares you for any reading comprehension format you might encounter.
