Racial Formation

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Racial Formation

• Article by Michael Omi
• and Howard Winant
• Presentation by Carianne Bradley

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In this presentation, we will discuss

• race, according to Omi
• what Racial Formation is, and discuss it in
  different aspects of life
• the evolution of modern racial awareness
• the presence of these issues in film

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WHAT IS RACE???? According to Omi

• We tend to think of race either as an essence,
  something fixed, concrete and objective,
• OR as an illusion, a purely ideological
  construct which some ideal non-racist social
  order would eliminate.

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Omis Definition
Race is a concept which signifies and symbolizes
social conflicts and interests by referring to
different types of human bodies.
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THERE IS NO BIOLOGICAL BASIS FOR DISTINGUISHING
AMONG HUMAN GROUPS ALONG THE LINES OF
RACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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According to Omi, we should think of race as an
element of social structure rather than as an
irregularity within it we should see race as a
dimension of human representation rather than an
illusion.
Which I think means
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Race is a topic which will always be around. No
matter what we can think, it will never go
away. So we might as well embrace it as a part
of our culture instead of trying to pretend it
doesnt affect us everyday.
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This idea gives way to Omis term Racial
Formation.
Racial Formation is the sociohistorical process
by which racial categories are created,
inhabited, transformed, and destroyed.
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Racial Formation Theory

• Omi argues that racial formation is a process of
  historically situated projects in which human
  bodies and social structures are represented and
  organized.

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Racial Formation Theory (continued)

• Racial Formation is linked to the evolution of
  hegemony (the way in which society is ruled and
  organized).

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Hegemony

• helps explain the nature of racism, the
  relationship of race to other forms of
  differences, inequalities, and oppression such as
  sexism and nationalism, and the dilemmas of
  racial identity today.

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NEW TERM!!! Dont get too excited!

• RACIAL PROJECT
• Is simultaneously an interpretation,
  representation, or explanation of racial
  dynamics, and an effort to reorganize and
  redistribute resources along particular racial
  lines.

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In other words,

• A racial project just helps to explain how people
  of different races interact in the world.

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Racial Formation as a Macro-Level Social Process

• To interpret the meaning of races is to fame it
  social structurally.
• Race is not a morally admissible reason for
  treating one person differently from another,
  Charles Murray on welfare reform.

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(continued)

• No state policy can legitimately require,
  recommend, or award different status according to
  race.
• This is known as a neoconservative racial
  project in the U.S.

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The Political Spectrum of Racial Formation

• Neoconservative approach
• Where the state is color blind and the
  significance of race is denied
• Liberal approach
• The significance of race is affirmed, leading to
  an activist state policy

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Racial Formation as Everyday Experience

• One of the first things we notice about people
  when we meet them is their race. We utilize race
  to provide clues about who a person is. This
  fact is made painfully obvious when we encounter
  someone whom we cannot racially categorize-
  someone who is mixed or of an ethnic/racial
  group we are not familiar with. Such an
  encounter becomes a source of discomfrot and
  momentarily a crisis of racial meaning.

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(continued)

• Temperament, sexuality, intelligence, athletic
  ability, aesthetic preferences, and so on are
  presumed to be fixed and discernible from the
  palpable mark of race.

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(continued)

• Sexual preferences and romantic images, our
  tastes in music, films, dance, or sports, and our
  very ways of talking, walking, eating, and
  dreaming become racially coded and simply because
  we live in a society where racial awareness is so
  pervasive.

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The Evolution of Modern Racial Awareness

• The distinction between groups of people goes
  back all the way through history, but it wasnt
  until the Europeans traveled to the Americas that
  a modern conception of race occurred.

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• The Europeans discovery of the new people
  raised questions as to which native peoples
  could be exploited and enslaved.

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• The seizure of territories and goods, the
  introduction of slavery, and then the
  organization of the African slave trade all
  presupposed a world-view which distinguished
  Europeans, as children of God, full-fledged human
  beings, etc., from Others.

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• The European conquest of the Americas initiated
  modern racial awareness.
• This was the first racial formation project.

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From Religion to Science

• In the 18th and 19th centuries, race was thought
  of as a biological concept, a matter of species.
• Voltaire wrote about the Negro race
• If their understanding is not of a different
  nature from ours, it is at least greatly
  inferior.

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(continued)

• Jefferson wrote about blacks
• I advance it thereforethat the blacksare
  inferior to the whites.
• People today are still in search of a scientific
  definition of race

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(continued)

• The concept of race has defied biological
  definition.

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From Science to Politics

• Race is a social concept.
• Omi concludes that we have now reached the point
  of fairly general agreement that races isa
  socially constructed way of differentiating human
  beings.

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Dictatorship, Democracy, Hegemony

• U.S. was mostly a racial dictatorship
• Most non-whites were excluded from politics
• Therefore America was defined as white
• This changed only in the 1960s

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(continued)

• Racial rule can be understood as a slow and
  uneven historical process which has moved from
  dictatorship to democracy, from domination to
  hegemony. In this transition, hegemonic forms of
  racial rule- those based on consent- eventually
  came to supplant those based on coercion.

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What is Racism?

• The combination of prejudice, discrimination, and
  institutional inequality which defined the
  concept of racism at the end of the 1960s.
• Omi states that racism, like race, has changed
  over time.

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• A racial project can be defined as racist if and
  only if it creates or reproduces structures of
  domination based on essentialist categories of
  race.
• There can be no timeless and absolute standard
  for what constitutes racism, for social
  structures changed and discourses are subject to
  rearticulation.