Mixing against culture vs mixing against nature: ontologization of prohibited interethnic relationships.

In this paper, we develop the theory of ontologization: Social representations that prevent members of minority and majority groups who are living in contact with each other to mingle. The process of ontologization consists of separating some humans from their own species, and anchoring them in another environment, that of an animal, for example. We propose that underlying the famous slogan "equal but separate" is the social representation of interracial mixing as a "counter-nature" phenomenon. It is predicted that a sexual relationship between people of different "races" leads to a greater degree of ontologization, and, as such, this miscegenation will be explained in terms of biologistic …