Michael Omi and Howard Winant (1986) wrote “Racial formation, to refer to the 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 meaning” (p.16). In the selected pieces they each show a glimpse of history and the racial problems that occurred. For instance, when a young African American male starts his first job, he learns what his place in society is, not to learn a new trade, not to gain any new knowledge, but to work under the white men. That is just one example of racial formations that occurred .The two concepts that I will be discussing are the racial formations and racial mixing. Brodkin wrote How Jews Became White a story
In this situation for the white people, it became very uncomfortable when they couldn’t tell what category people were in just from looking at them. Since they wanted to keep the white category known as “pure” they created the term hypo-decent. Marvin Harris states that “…the rule of hypo-decent. This descent rule requires Americans to believe that anyone who is known to have had a Negro ancestor is a Negro” (Omi and Winant, 1986. P.15). This idea is also portrayed in Bucks piece “Whites had an equal interest in the maintenance of whiteness and white privilege” (2001, P.37). To keep the white category as unadulterated, they saw that if white women were marrying a black man that it was mixing the separation that they had created. The very idea was unfathomable; they intern created a law in 1691 that allowed them to treat women, who were with a black man, as a slave. They did that just so they didn’t have to “prevent the existence of such children” (Buck,2001, P. 33-34) since mixed race children were a burden to have to enslave and make money off of. In 1892 Homer Plessy, a man of mix race, bought a first class ticket to a railroad car that was only meant for the white to ride in. Plessy was imprisoned and lost the trial in court. That goes into both mixed races as well as the Jim Crow law that Wright talked about. Plessy had been told that he was in the wrong even though he was 7/8 white, there was a pigment of black and he was treated as a black man. That connects back to the whites trying to keep it a “pure”
First, I will examine Omi and Winant’s approach. They made a clear distinction between ethnicity and race and only discussed how races are formed. They also define race as a constantly being transformed by political struggle and it is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by
Making Whiteness: the culture of segregation in the south, 1890-1940 is the work of Grace Elizabeth Hale. In her work, she explains the culture of the time between 1890 and 1940. In her book she unravels how the creation of the ‘whiteness’ of white Southerners created the ‘blackness’ identity of southern African Americans. At first read it is difficult to comprehend her use of the term ‘whiteness’, but upon completion of reading her work, notes included, makes sense. She states that racial identities today have been shaped by segregation, “...the Civil War not only freed the slaves, it freed American racism
From Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s piece Racial Formation in the United States, they argue that “race” starts with a look at historical “racial formations” that is the “sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed” (21). This occurs through racial projects that link the representation and social structure of racial dynamics through ideology. This means the creation and reproduction of structures of domination based on essentialist categories of race, which is racism. Two groups to examine from the nineteenth century of the United States for the process of “racial formation” would be the Irish and the Chinese.
movement of African American students into predominantly white neighborhood schools and the mixing of two separate but legally equal peoples.
In reading chapter 1, of the “Ethnic Myth”, by Stephen Steinberg, explains how the U.S. has a dominant society. In the U.S. class structures, unequal distributions of wealth, and political power vary between certain racial and ethnic groups. A main idea in this reading is ethnic pluralism which is defined as a particularly diverse racial or ethnic group that maintains their traditional culture within a broader more common civilization. Throughout history, race and ethnicity have caused conflict and the struggle of dominance over land. In reading chapter 2, of Drawing the Color Line, by Howard Zinn, explains how early in history inferior statuses of races which lead to mistreatment lead to racism. The very start of slavery began when african american slaves were brought to the north american colony called Jamestown.
In D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation the interactions between black and white characters represent Griffith’s view of an appropriate racial construct in America. His ideological construction is white dominance and black subordination. Characters, such as the southern Cameron’s and their house maid, who interact within these boundaries, are portrayed as decent people. Whereas characters who cross the line of racial oppression; such as Austin Stoneman, Gus and Silas Lynch, are portrayed as bad. Both Lynch and Lydia Brown, the mulatto characters, are cast in a very negative light because they confuse the ideological construct the most. The mixing of races puts blacks and whites on a common ground, which, in Griffith’s view, is a big step in the wrong direction. Griffith portrays how the relationship between blacks and whites can be good only if the color line and positions of dominance and subordination are maintained. Through the mulatto characters he illustrates the danger that blurring the color line poses to American society.
Winant, Howard. 2000 "Race and race theory." Annual review of sociology ():-. Retrieved from http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/winant/Race_and_Race_Theory.html on Mar 17, 1980
...to the foundation of American Society. We continue to support and maintain these social norms through deliberated and non deliberated ways, forced servitude and the advancement of racial legislation fostered racism in the United States. The most intellectuals of their time, contemplated to the degree of what the New Worlds people were considered to be human. Some Europeans had hope for Natives and possible guidance, but it became evident, that profit and status were more viable entities than any sort of human decency or equality. As minorities began to unify and protest discrimination, legislation was built off of Anglo-Saxon domination and ideologies, only to continue to delay the growth of colored people. Laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act, Separate but Equal, and Jim Crow Laws are just a few examples of such legislation inflicted upon colored groups in America.
Separate but Equal doctrine existed long before the Supreme Court accepted it into law, and on multiple occasions it arose as an issue before then. In 1865, southern states passed laws called “Black Codes,” which created restrictions on the freed African Americans in the South. This became the start of legal segregation as juries couldn’t have African Americans, public schools became segregated, and African Americans had restrictions on testifying against majorities. In 1887, Jim Crow Laws started to arise, and segregation becomes rooted into the way of life of southerners (“Timeline”). Then in 1890, Louisiana passed the “Separate Car Act.” This forced rail companies to provide separate rail cars for minorities and majorities. If a minority sat in the wrong car, it cost them $25 or 20 days in jail. Because of this, an enraged group of African American citizens had Homer Plessy, a man who only had one eighth African American heritage, purchase a ticket and sit in a “White only” c...
Schaefer, Richard, T. Racial and Ethnic Groups. 12th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2010. Print.
Race has been one of the most outstanding situations in the United States all the way from the 1500s up until now. The concept of race has been socially constructed in a way that is broad and difficult to understand. Social construction can be defined as the set of rules are determined by society’s urges and trends. The rules created by society play a huge role in racialization, as the U.S. creates laws to separate the English or whites from the nonwhites. Europeans, Indigenous People, and Africans were all racialized and victimized due to various reasons. Both the Europeans and Indigenous People were treated differently than African American slaves since they had slightly more freedom and rights, but in many ways they are also treated the same. The social construction of race between the Europeans, Indigenous People, and Africans led to the establishment of how one group is different from the other.
The United States used racial formation and relied on segregation that was essentially applied to all of their social structures and culture. As we can see, race and the process of racial formation have important political and economic implications. Racial formation concept seeks to connect and give meaning to how race is shaped by social structure and how certain racial categories are given meaning our lives or what they say as “common sense” Omi and Winant seek to further explain their theory through racial
Social Stratification in the African American community has changed over the years. Social stratification is defined as a rigid subdivision of a society into a hierarchy of layers, differentiated on the basis of power, prestige, and wealth according to Webster’s dictionary. David Newman in Sociology Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life describes stratification as a ranking system for groups of people that perpetuates unequal rewards and life chances in society. From slavery to the present, the African American community has been seen to have lower status compared to white people. Today, the stratification or hierarchy difference between whites and black are not really noticeable, but it is still present. However, during slavery, the difference in social stratification was noticeable. Whites dominated over the blacks and mulattoes (offspring of a white and black parent). The mulattoes were seen to have a higher stratification than an offspring of black ancestry. Because the mulattoes were related to the whites, they were able to obtain higher education and better occupations than blacks. For example, most slaves of a lighter skin tone worked in the houses and darker slaves worked in the fields. As the people of light skin tone had children, they were able to have advantages too. The advantages have led into the society of today. In this paper I will discuss how stratification has been affected in the African American community over time by skin tone to make mulattoes more privileged than dark skin blacks.
"Social Forces." The Skin Color Paradox and the American Racial Order. Oxfordjournals,org, 2007. Web. 29 Mar. 2014.
In that setting, racial difference and racial hierarchy can be made to appear with seeming spontaneity as a stabilizing force. They can supply vivid natural means to lock an increasingly inhospitable and lonely social world in place and to secure one 's own position in turbulent environments (Gilroy, 430).