For some time now, speaking of racialized people has become common across very different spheres, from activism to academia and government institutions, and even in the media. The term is used to refer to or identify people who, as a general rule, are not white or who have an ethnic origin or phenotype that cannot be directly associated with that skin color and other facial features linked to it.

Although there have been some debates regarding the use and content of the term—though not always with agreement—its presence has become widespread. There have even been positions that claim the use and appropriation of the term as a victory in political discourse for self-identification, as a word of unity among people with certain personal characteristics, a common term to build alliances, or as a way of renaming that racialization which is denied or hidden in our societies.

Although all of the above is partly true[1], speaking of racialized people, without further nuance, to identify what has happened to some people and not to others, leaves aside a very important part of what the racialization of human beings was, has been, and is: we have all been racialized, but not all of us were or are racialized in the same way.

Derived from historical processes of colonization—but not only from these—all human beings have been racialized in order to place us on a social or even sociological scale that sought to break with the equal dignity of all human beings. As a general rule, “white-skinned” people have been racialized positively, placing them at the top of this scale. Meanwhile, those of us who do not meet this personal characteristic of “whiteness” have been racialized negatively at different levels and scales, placing us, according to our ethnic origin, skin color, or national origin, in the lowest positions of that scale.

And this situation is not minor. Because if everyday language loses sight of the fact that, from its origin, some people were racialized positively and others negatively, part of that socially constructed hierarchy is concealed; it shows who has been oppressed or harmed due to certain personal characteristics in the process of racialization, but it does not name, not even indirectly, those who have benefited from that same process. Thus, the myth of “race” and “racialization” once again remains on the side of the part of society that has suffered oppression, while it abstracts those who have benefited and gained privileges from that process[2]. Hence it has been so easy and accepted for the term “racialized” to spread across many different spheres, because the most serious and harmful aspect of racialization is hidden: hierarchy, stigmatization, the presumption of lesser civilization—that is, it always has two faces, two main scales.

The myth of “human races” as a rigid and hierarchical classification emerged in the Early Modern period, when colonial expansion combined with the development of European classificatory science, mainly between the 17th and 19th centuries. Naturalists such as Carl Linnaeus (18th century)[3] and later Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (late 18th century)[4] proposed systems of classification based on physical traits such as skin color, skull shape, or hair. These categories, which claimed to be scientific, were influenced by cultural prejudices and social hierarchies, and were used to justify slavery, colonialism, and theories of racial superiority, such as those later developed by Arthur de Gobineau (19th century)[5]. And although today science—especially genetics[6]—has shown that “human races” do not have a solid biological basis, but are social constructions without real scientific foundation, these classifications and hierarchies have remained almost unchanged in our societies, having been the means of categorizing human beings for centuries.

If, instead of skin pigment, racialization (hierarchy, beauty, intelligence, leadership, supremacy) had been established based on height—another personal trait that is inherited and is about 80% genetically determined—in addition to seeming absurd today, it would require, in order to explain it in its full dimension, speaking both of those who are 1.20 meters tall and those who are 2.10 meters tall, and intermediate heights, in order to establish who was benefited and who was harmed in that arbitrary designation or granting of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, the benefit of the doubt, and the presumption of human goodness.

Moreover, it is important to name positive and negative racialization, because today there are many people who are not racist in the “classic sense,” that is, they do not hate or openly act against a group or person determined by some of their personal characteristics; nevertheless, in their internal—and even subconscious—imagination, they are unable to eliminate that hierarchy, those stereotypes, that social role assigned to certain personal characteristics. Because no ethnic or racial category is immune to the messages we receive regarding hierarchy; no one escapes its stigmatizing consequences.

The invisibility of positive and negative racialization, simplified into a term that hides categorization (“racialized”), does little to dismantle, at its core, the power, persistence, and longevity of racism in all its forms. Only by naming, directly or indirectly, the two faces of racialization (without forgetting its other internal hierarchies, because within negative and positive racialization there are also such hierarchies) can we attempt to dismantle the instructions we have internalized regarding who should be in a certain place and performing a given task, who seems “normal” to us to be identified by the police at an airport or on the street, who can be the holder of knowledge considered relevant.

Speaking of people negatively racialized also allows, in turn, the discomfort that people positively racialized become aware of the privileges they received in that process of racialization, that all of us are part of that process, but only some of us continue to carry the negative side assigned to skin pigment, phenotype, ethnicity, and other easily associated traits.

It is true that the term negatively racialized is “very” long in this world of brevity and communicative immediacy, but it is worth it, for the reasons stated above, to “spend a few more words” in speeches, news, or documents when what we are dealing with is a very long process of more than four centuries of human categorization.

[1] One of the main criticisms of the term “racialized” has to do with the fact that it renders invisible or homogenizes the great diversity that exists among the people and groups that can be included within that term and, therefore, renders invisible those individuals or groups that have been more historically oppressed in certain regions of the world. This is not a minor issue and must also be kept in mind in the proposal developed here.

[2] With the use of the term “racialized,” it has reached the point of absurdity that, when referring to people racialized as white, it is said that they are not racialized. When in fact they are, because otherwise that entire process would not be understandable; it is simply that they have been racialized positively—they have been the beneficiaries of the process. So much so that, as can be seen, they are erased from that process.

[3] He divided humanity into four major groups in his work Systema Naturae: europeus (Europeans, light-skinned), asiaticus (Asians), americanus (Indigenous peoples of the Americas), and afer (Africans). In addition to physical traits, he assigned them personality characteristics, reflecting strong cultural prejudices.

[4] He expanded the classification to five “races”: Caucasian (Europeans and some peoples of Western Asia), Mongolian (East Asia), Ethiopian (sub-Saharan Africa), American (Indigenous peoples of the Americas), and Malayan (Southeast Asia and Oceania). Blumenbach is important because he popularized the term “Caucasian.”

[5] He did not create as detailed a classification as the previous ones, but he proposed three major groups: white, yellow, and black. In his work Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, he argued that there are innate differences between races and that the “white race” is superior, and that racial mixing leads to the decline of civilizations.

[6] In the year 2000, a genetic map was completed from which it was established that humans are 99.9% identical, after decades of analysis of the human genome.