Racialize is in quite a few dictionaries these days, and the alternate spelling
racialise is acknowledged in some of them. The word has a few meanings. Dictionary.com lists these:
- to impose a racial interpretation on; place in a racial context.
- to perceive, view, or experience in a racial context.
- to categorize or differentiate on the basis of membership in a racial group.
The OED gives examples going back to 1917. Interestingly, the two pre-WWII citations are from religious texts, and seem to be using the word in relation to Jewishness. I suppose this provides some support for the proposition that "race" is basically a social construct.
Of the words derived from
racialize,
racialized is by far the most frequently used, with
racialization coming in second, ahead of
racialize itself,
racializing and
racializes.
Not surprisingly the most recent examples of the use of these terms mostly relate to the current upsurge of Black Lives Matter protests. An opinion piece in
USA Today on the 22nd of this month wrote:
He looked George Floyd’s daughter in the eye, but is Biden really ready to lead our nation through a long-overdue period of policing reform needed to bring about an end to racialized police violence?
I will add to our lexicon as rare words
racialize,
racialized,
racializing and
racialization, along with the variants using
S instead of
Z.