"Racism always takes for granted the objective reality of race . . . [which] transforms racism, something an aggressor does, into race, something the target is, in a sleight of hand that is easy to miss." — Karen & Barbara Fields, Racecraft

Race is invisible. Skin colour is merely in indication of something deeper, a hidden quality of the intellect or the personality. But that quality is not real. Like an unseen world of gods or spirits, we imagine it to give life meaning. We use this invisible, imagined quality of race explain why bad things happen: inequality, crime, injustice.

In fact, race is real - as a social construction. As explain in a previous episode,  social constructions are not simply in our minds. They are made of real people, things, and our interactions. Race does not exist as an invisible quality inside us - but we do create it as something we outside and among us. Census forms, news stories, academic papers: these are what race is made of, not some invisible force in the body.

The anti-racism of the social justice movement acknowledges that race is socially constructed - but then it repeats the error. Racism, as the Fields sisters say, is not imaginary: it is actual oppression. It is actual things that people do to other people. Anti-racism replaces material racism with another invisible, imaginary quality of consciousness. But dematerializing racism into a phantom like race itself makes it nearly impossible to fight.

Race is the perpetuation of the the belief in an invisible quality that doesn't exist. As the Fields sisters say, "the first principle of racism is belief in race." By continually recreating race, we pass racism down from generation to generation.