Racial Formation Theory

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Racial Formation Theory

• Lecture 2
• Beyond the Binaries
• COM 490
• Professor Ralina Joseph

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Go-Post

• Share results of TV watching

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Terms

• Race
• Racialization/racial formation
• The racial state

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Race

• Race is a social construction which alters over
  the course of time due to historical and social
  pressures.
• Race is organizing principle
• Race isnt essence, its an unstable and
  decentered complex of social meanings
  constantly being transformed by political
  struggle (68)

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So

• Omi and Winant's definition of race throws out
  ideas that race is 1) a biological fact and 2) an
  illusion.
• Instead race very real social classification
  that has both cultural ramifications as well as
  enforces a definite social order (54-55).

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Racial Formation

• Racial formation is the process by which
  socio-historical designations of race are created
  and manipulated.
• Racial formation explains the definition and
  redefinition of specific race identities.
• Two levels of racial formation macro (social
  structure and political projects launched both by
  and in opposition to the racial state, such as a
  court decision) and micro (every day experiences)

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Racial Formation, cont.

• emphasizes the social nature of race, the
  absence of any essential racial characteristics,
  the historical flexibility of racial meanings and
  categories, the conflictual character of race at
  both the micro and macro-social levels, and
  the irreducible political aspect of racial
  dynamics (4)
• process by which social, economic and political
  forces determine the content and importance of
  racial categories, and by which they are in turn
  shaped by racial meanings (61)
• Racialization (the process of racial formation)
  means the extension of racial meaning to a
  previously racially unclassified relationship,
  social practice or group an ideological and
  historically specific project where racial
  ideology comes from pre-existing conceptual
  elements

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Racial State

• Common facilitator of macro and micro level
  processes
• Government (laws, court decisions, etc.,
  determines trajectory of race relations).
• Determines hegemony in racial formations, but can
  also alter this race hegemony.
• Is "the pattern of conflict and accommodation
  which takes place over time between racially
  based social movements and the policies and
  programs of the state" (78).

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Result?

• Racial state mediates competing interests
• Racial state controls the subordinate population
  through education or lack of education as well as
  the police.
• Control of the population by the state provides
  cheap labor supply through immigration policy,
  etc.
• The racial state maintains race ideology or
  hegemony.

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Five Minute Writing

• Looking at your definitions of race, racial
  formation/racialization, and the racial state
  explore the following question Does the process
  of racial formation help to solidify or go beyond
  binaries? Explain.

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Screening

• Race The Power of an Illusion Episode 1, The
  Difference Between Us (2003)