Racialization is a descriptive sociological theory that explains how people in power group, sort, and define others by race or ethnicity through social systems, in ways that dismiss their rights and limit their freedoms and life chances. It shows how hurtful stereotypes or negative ideas are forced on certain groups repeatedly to keep them from having equal access to jobs, public services, housing, education, and protection under the law. It makes social systems do the work of racism, allowing harm to continue without open racist behavior.
In the United States in the mid-1800s, there were laws called the Black Codes. These laws were made to stop Black Americans from having the same legal, political, and civic rights as white people. They were created by the dominant group to keep Black people from gaining a fair place in society or fair treatment.
Racialization in the 21st century continues through social processes like gatekeeping, where people are blocked from getting good education or jobs. It happens in redlining, where banks or insurance companies refuse or limit services based on race. It also happens when false or negative views about certain racial groups are spread online, or when community service centers give racialized groups wrong or not enough information about public services and programs.
Racialization is often denied by dominant groups and those who follow the dominant group's way of thinking through racial gaslighting. This is when people in a society try to dismiss or deny the reality of racial unfairness. It makes racialized people doubt their own personal experiences. When this happens to people of African descent, it is called racelighting.
We employ the term racialization to signify the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice, or group.
Racialization is the process by which societies construct races as real, different and unequal in ways that matter to economic, political and social life. It involves: selecting some human characteristics as meaningful signs of racial difference; sorting people into races on the basis of variations in these characteristics; attributing personality traits, behaviours (sic) and social characteristics to people classified as members of particular races; and acting as if race indicates socially significant differences among people.