Omni & Winant Flashcards
Week Ten
-Racial categories and identities are not naturally occurring but are created, transformed, and
destroyed over time through social, economic, and political processes.
-They view race as a primary factor in shaping institutions, social relations, and identity.
-They argue that dominant racial ideologies function hegemonically.
key arguments
The process by which social, political, and economic forces determine the content and
importance of racial categories and, by extension, racial meanings.
Racial Formation
Efforts that interpret, represent, or explain racial identities while simultaneously organizing
resources and power along racial lines.
-They can either support or resist racial inequality.
Racial Projects
-“Race is a concept that signifies and symbolizes social conflict and interests
by referring to different types of human bodies.”
-There is no biological basis for race, yet it is a “master category.”
-“(race is) a selection of particular human features for purposes of racial
signification and is always a social and historical process.” (see the
Rwandan Genocide)
-Race is both stable as a persistent social force, and unstable as constantly
redefined by social conditions.
-“We should think of race as an element of social structure rather as an
irregularity within it; we should see race as a dimension of human
representation rather than an illusion.”
-Thus, it is difficult to jettison…
- What is Race?
RACIAL FORMATION
THEORY
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 is a distinction between racial essentialism and racial awareness.
-Examples from Omni and Winant of non-racist racial projects:
-The organization of a black accountants group would utilize racial
signification because black accountants have similar experiences.
However, there is no reproduction of dominance or essentialism.
-“Many Asian Americans are entrepreneurial.”
-Examples from Omni and Winant racist racial projects:
-Asian Americans are naturally entrepreneurial and thus, should receive
more subsidies.
- What is Racism and what makes something racist?
RACIAL FORMATION THEORY
The sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited,
transformed, and destroyed.
1. Depends upon historically situated ways in which human bodies and social
structures are represented and organized.
2. Racial formation is linked to hegemony, the way in which society is culturally
organized and ruled.
-“Everybody learns some version of the rules of racial classification, and of
their own racial identity, often without obvious teaching or conscious
inculcation…race becomes commonsense—a way of comprehending,
explaining, and acting the world.
- Racial Formation is a Process
RACIAL FORMATION THEORY
-Racial projects are actions that link representations of race with the distribution of resources.
-They interpret and give meaning to race while shaping social structures through laws,
policies, or everyday practices.
-Racist vs. Antiracist Projects
-Racial projects can either reinforce racism or challenge racism.
-Examples of racial projects according to Omni and Winant:
-Color-blindness (See Bonila-Silva)
-The War on Drugs
-The Southern Strategy
-Willie Horton Ad
-School desegregation
-The Model Minority myth
- How do racial projects develop?
RACIAL FORMATION THEORY
Implements policies that define, reinforce, or challenge racial
categories and hierarchies.
-State institutions shape who has access to resources and power
within society.
Changes in racial formation occur through a cycle of conflict and
compromise between racial movements (like the Civil Rights
Movement) and the state, which absorbs or neutralizes demands to
maintain a new, but still unequal, equilibrium.
- The State is as an active participant in racial projects
RACIAL FORMATION THEORY
