Racial Formation

Question 1

What is race?

Answer 1

Race is a concept that signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies

Question 2

What is racial formation?

Answer 2

It is the sociohistorical process by which racial identities are created, lived out, transformed, and destroyed

Question 3

What is racialization?

Answer 3

It the process of selection, of impairing social and symbolic meaning to perceived phenotypical differences

Question 4

What is race, racial formation, and racialization?

Answer 4

They are all historical and social processes that structure identities

Question 5

What are historical processes based on?

Answer 5

They are based in conflict, interest, power; sometimes at the expense of others

Question 6

What is power?

Answer 6

It is a force that organizes social relations

Question 7

What does the process of race making comprise of?

Answer 7

It comprises of a complex selection of human characteristics that are both real and imagined

Question 8

What is race making?

Answer 8

It is a mechanism that creates a social hierarchy, categorizing complex cultures and societies in a way that benefits those who are in power

Question 9

Why do Omi and Winant not consider race as essence and race as ideology?

Answer 9

Because it is a social category with definite social consequences

Question 10

Why can’t we get rid of race?

Answer 10

It is difficult to dispense an ideology that is so heavily ingrained in our society in almost all aspects of our lives (personal, social, political, etc.)

Question 11

What do Omi and Winant believe to be the only way to get rid of racism?

Answer 11

It is to acknowledge that the concept of “[…] race continues to play a fundamental role in structuring and representing the social world” (p. 112) and to oppose it with structures that don’t deny its existence and continued effect

Question 12

What is a racial project?

Answer 12

“A racial project is simultaneously an interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial identities and meanings, and an effort to organize and distribute resources (economic, political, cultural) along particular racial lines.” (p, 125)

Question 13

The US and as a country and concept was created based on what discourses?

Answer 13

It was created based on discourses that surround racism

Question 14

What were the three sources of the discourse that surrounds the West and the Rest? Name them in chronological order

Answer 14

Theological
Scientific
Political

Question 15

How did the discourse of the West and the Rest come from theological frameworks?

Answer 15

European settlers first questioned whether the indigenous peoples they came in contact with were human, godly, etc.

Question 16

How did the discourse of the West and the Rest come from scientific frameworks?

Answer 16

Scientific studies of race further emphasized the categories that were initially created through racism by way of justifying these differences with the use of “phenotypes” or “biological differences”

Question 17

How did the discourse of the West and the Rest come from political frameworks?

Answer 17

It was political in the beginning but the contemporary issue is that racism is more so based on political struggles and categories rather than theological and scientific beliefs

Question 18

What does Sir Edward Burnett Tylor say about culture?

Answer 18

Tylor says that every group of people has a culture, “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (Kwame)

Question 19

WhaWhat does Mathew Arnold say about culture?

Answer 19

Mathew says that there is a form of “high culture”, the “pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world” (Kwame)

Question 20

For what purposes is the expression “the West” used for?

Answer 20

To differentiate the civilized from the uncivilized
To create a racial category used to define “whiteness”