ABSTRACT
Racial stereotyping cannot be understood without reference to whiteness, the racially unmarked, normative centre from which it stems. Such reference must be central to the way in which racial stereotyping is conceived as a boundary-maintenance practice, a way of designating and reifying cultural ‘difference’. This raises the question of cultural racism and its distinction from biological racism. Following discussion of this question, the chapter examines how racial stereotypes operate in their attempts to give a fixed, absolute definition to their objects. These attempts in turn feed into and reinforce racist discourse and social myth. The chapter emphasises the importance of differentiating between categories and stereotypes before going on to consider changes in ‘race’ and representation over the past twenty years or so. It concludes with a discussion of the relation between racial stereotypes and the subjectivities of those who are their targets. Racial stereotypes deny the capacity of self-determination upon which subjectivity depends.
