Racial Discrimination and Social Inequality

This chapter addresses the topic of racial discrimination in three steps. First, it discusses two important aspects of racism, namely, dehumanisation and essentialism. It shows that, although important, those are not distinctive traits of racial discrimination in particular. The chapter then advances in defining what is discrimination in general, relying mostly on literature about discrimination and social cognition. Finally, the chapter discusses what defines racial discrimination in particular. It shows that racial classifications comprise imaginaries on human diversity and inheritance in terms of aggregated entities. Those imaginaries are coproducts of expert systems and more comprehensive social dynamics.