Race Peter Wade Summary

In the title, “ Racial Formation in the United States”, author Michael Omi and Howard Winant argues that the problems of understanding race and how it can be established and seen to be the answer through the concept of hegemony within the racial cultures. Society needs to understand racial combination within each race, then understand how the force and the consent plays a major role within each party or community in the United States of America. Now, in the title, “A More Perfect Union,” author Barack Obama emphasizes that race has diverse stories in which it proves that we still hold common hopes in understanding society as a whole through common sense in racism. Barack Obama’s speech proves several ideas about race by comprehending how he became the president and how society interacts around the topic in which Michael Omi and Howard Winant tends to prove in the article. Omi and Winant’ s claims that racial categories serve in the U.S can be seen as common sense and hegemony concept.

In a carefully worded essay I will discuss the aspect of ‘race’ as a hindrance to the

In his book White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (Revised and Updated 10th anniversary edition), Ian Haney López explores the legal construction of race, and in particular

In this context, Audry Smedley’s Race in North America provides the reader with a chronological approach to the concept of race that explores its evolution and their implications in the configuration of societies among the world.

Racial Formation in the United States by Michael Omi and Howard Winant made me readjust my understanding of race by definition and consider it as a new phenomenon. Through, Omi and Winant fulfilled their purpose of providing an account of how concepts of race are created and transformed, how they become the focus of political conflict, and how they shape and permeate both identities and institutions. I always considered race to be physical characteristic by the complexion of ones’ skin tone and the physical attributes, such as bone structure, hair texture, and facial form. I knew race to be a segregating factor, however I never considered the meaning of race as concept or signification of identity that refers to different types of human bodies, to the perceived corporal and phenotypic makers of difference and the meanings and social practices that are ascribed to these differences, in which in turn create the oppressing dominations of racialization, racial profiling, and racism. (p.111). Again connecting themes from the previous readings, my westernized influences are in a direct correlation to how to the idea of how I see race and the template it has set for the rather automatic patterns of inequalities, marginalization, and difference. I never realized how ubiquitous and evolving race is within the United States.

For this week’s memo, I decided to read “Racial Formations” by Omi and Winant. The reading talks about the meaning of race as being defined and challenged throughout society in both collective and personal practices. It also suggests that racial categories are created, changed, ruined, and renewed. Omi and Winant explore the idea that the conception of race developed progressively, ultimately being created to validate and rationalize inequality. It began with the denial of political rights and extended into the introduction of slavery and other forms of forcible labor.

According to Howard F. Taylor ‘race’ is complex, therefore it cannot be defined by a single definition . The term is ‘multiply defined’; as a result, he has created a set of his own definitions which all coexist with each other meaning ‘no one definition takes precedence over another’ . They include the following categories: biological, social construction, ethnic group, social class/prestige rank, racial formation/society’s institutions and self-defined . These associations will be used to get an understanding of ‘race’ in accordance to the early nineteenth century in the USA by the ‘Christian Missionaries Oppose Removal, 1830’ and New Zealand in the extract from ‘The Letters and Journals of Samuel Marsden’ .

THESIS: Scientists and other intellectuals recognize the modern concept of "race" as an artificial category that developed over the past five centuries due to encounters with non-European people. Even though people still attempt to organize humans into categories according to their race, these categories have been shown to have no scientific basis.

How race determined who was in and who was out. As Dickerson states “if race is real and not just a method for the haves to decide who will be have-nots, then all Europeans immigrants, from Ireland a to Greece, would have been “white” the moment they arrived here. Instead, as documented in David Roediger’s excellent Working Towards Whiteness, they were long considered inferior, nearly subhuman, and certainly not white” (69). This shows how race wasn’t about common culture or history but a concept to decide what race is good enough to be consider “white” or better than others. Even though the Europeans where the same race or color of the other people who considered themselves Americans or “white” they were still discriminated for being different and immigrants like everybody else. But soon they realized that identifying them self as being white gave them some sort of hierarchy. It gave them more class compared to the other races. As Debra Dickerson said, “If you were neither black nor Asian nor Hispanic, eventually you could become white, invested with enforceable civil rights and the right to exploit-and hate-nonwhites” (69). Being identify as white gave the power to have privileges that non-whites will never have since they are not the same color. Non- whites are treated unfairly compared to the white people in many ways. Discrimination not only took place between people of different races but

One of the most prevalent themes throughout the world’s history is the dispute over race and racial differences. But, there is a problem: the majority of the population doesn’t have a clear understanding of what race is. Race is a socially constructed grouping of people that was created in order for people to differentiate themselves from one another and has many sources of influence. While most people believe race is determined by biological characteristics (hair type, skin color, eye shape, etc.), this is not true. To make things more complicated, there is no cut and dry definition to race. Authors of Race and Ethnicity in Society, Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margret Anderson, claim that there are seven different distinct ways to define race. They begin with the popular belief of biological characteristics, and, as mentioned before, through social construction. They go on to note that race can be formed from an ethnic group, from social class rank, from racial formation by institutions, and also can form from one’s self-definition (Higginbotham & Anderson, 2012, p. 13). All of these ways to define race have been seen throughout our history, and many of them have caused problems for minorities, especially in the United States.

‘Whiteness’ is a socially constructed category of race, where people who are not ‘white’ are racially designated while ‘whites’ escape designation as if their racial category is not historically and ideologically based (Puzan, 2003). Race is socially constructed (Dyer, 1997) and it is important to acknowledge this in order to address its impact. Unless whiteness is labelled and confronted, being ‘white’ is usually considered the ‘norm’ which acquires certain social privileges, while all other socially-constructed categories of ‘race’ are considered different or, as Puzan (2003) terms it, the ‘racialised Other’.

“The concept of race is based on the idea of fixed, ideal and unchanging types”

In Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s essay “Racial Formation”, we see how the tendency to assign each individual a specific race as misleading. This essay suggests that race is not merely biological, but rather lays more in sociology and historical perspective. Once we look at someone and say, “They’re white”, it brings forth all the stereotype’s that go along with that “race”, and once the race is assigned, it is assumed that we can know something about the person.

Notwithstanding the fact that constructs of race can be similar and indeed more often than not transcend nations and/or political communities (as I’ve just mentioned earlier), they are still grounded in local sensibilities. I insist on this last point because like many non-American bloggers, I’ve been appalled by how some US-based bloggers have interpreted racial politics outside of the US (both in past and modern times). While I’ve been troubled by the rampant US-centrism and total inability of some to appreciate that there is a world beyond twenty-first century USA, I’ve also found myself a bit disappointed with how many European bloggers (especially) have refused to look at some of the similarities in the particular ways in which racialization has occurred across the Western world. Again, I do not wish to imply that racial categories are necessarily the same in Europe as they are in the United States (and, I have to say there is something strange about the way Europe is often used in those conversations given that we are talking about a myriad of countries), but I think that because of the heated manner in which those debates have evolved on Tumblr, many have not

Although race does not exist in the world in an objective way, it still is relevant in today’s society. It is obvious that race is real in society and it affects the way we view others as well as ourselves. Race is a social construct that is produced by the superior race and their power to regulate. “The category of ‘white’ was subject to challenges brought about by the influx of diverse groups who were not of the same Anglo-Saxonstock as the founding immigrants” (Omi and Winant 24). Frankly, ‘white’ was the norm, the others were considered an outcast.