Mari Sanchez

Research interests: ethnic/racial classification in post-colonial societies; intra-minority relations and solidarity; social movements and Third World politics; cultural meanings of diversity and demographic change.

Bio: Mari Sanchez is a Doctoral Candidate in Sociology. Mari is broadly interested in how societies manage and make sense of growing ethnoracial diversity. Her research lies at the intersection of ethnoracial classification, knowledge production, and intra-minority politics. Her dissertation offers a comparative study of “non-white meta-categories” – superordinate categories that encapsulate various populations considered non-white – in the US and the UK. She interrogates how non-white meta categories, which were used in administrative spheres and radical movements in the US and UK over the last 50 years to manage ethnoracial diversity and seek ethnoracial rights, have been unsettled, challenged, and revised since the 2020 murder of George Floyd. Before graduate school, Mari worked 9 years in the advertising world, where she specialized in analyzing, understanding, and creating cultural narratives of diversity and inclusion.

Research summary: My research examines “non-white meta-categories” -- umbrella categories that collectively refer to racialized populations -- in the US and UK. In the US, non-white meta-categories include “minority” and variations of “people of color”; in the UK, these include “Politically Black” and variations of “minority ethnic” such as “Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic” (BAME). While racial justice activists and state actors in both countries have used non-white meta-categories since the 1960s, the categories were revised or abandoned around 20020. I ask how and why non-white meta-categories became unsettled -- focusing on public debates around the categories as a site where actors puzzle through racial difference and justice. I study these changes by first interviewing public figures in each country challenging the categories. I then look at government bodies that proposed new guidelines for the categories. In the US, I examine updates announced in 2022 to Statistical Directive 15, which eliminated the category “minority”; in the UK, I examine the Cabinet Office’s Race Disparity Unit 2022 standards for ethnicity data, which eliminates the category “BAME.” Non-white meta-categories shape assumptions about the commonalities and differences of racialized communities, illuminate certain racial inequalities while obscuring others, and inform pathways to achieve racial justice.

This information is accurate as of the affiliate year indicated. (last updated 12.28.2025)