ABSTRACT
Black males have used the expression “brothers” when greeting one another to refer to the fact of racial confl ict. For example, the black revolutionary leader Malcolm X explained that it was not race that made men brothers. According to him, “oppression made them brothers; exploitation made them brothers; degradation made them brothers; . . . humiliation made them brothers.”1 Since scholars showed the race concept has little merit as a biological variable, it is important to remember when social scientists refer to it they are referring to a social product.2 By this, it means that race has meaning in social life and it partially determines economic, political, and social opportunities and rewards. For this reason, we cannot simply erase race from the vocabulary since it is more than merely a word; one could not delete the word “race” and eliminate its effects. In politics, however, many may come to think in this way. Added to the race-as-social-construct problem, are the references that communicate racial categories. Is it possible to eliminate them merely through choosing different words-would not the metonymic structure of racialization remain? This question is a profound one for citizens interested in social justice.
